Column - A lot to be thankful for

Monday mornings can seem to come back around as fast as the minute hand on a mounted clock.

Let the dogs out, wake the kid, start the coffee, go back and shake that drowsy kid, let the dogs in, give aforementioned kid a final warning, down the coffee, do the dishes and push everybody out the door. That's before the week even really gets started, and the days don't get any better from there.

We are jugglers, make-doers forever getting snagged on life's little jagged edges - busses missed, projects bungled, viruses caught, plans changed. Who has time to count their blessings? And even if we did, who would be motivated start counting in a year that's been so especially troubled?

There's the bad news to which we've become accustomed - the rising unemployment, the families struggling to buy food, the hate groups, the violence, the scandals and abuses of public trust exposed with a depressing regularity.

Then there are the personal tragedies. Neighbors and friends who have been body-slammed by catastrophe - by jobs lost, relationships soured, by illnesses and death.

One woman I know will spend this holiday season in a hotel room, after her house was damaged in an electrical fire.

Another friend is among the country's legions of unemployed, with nothing to show for his months of pounding the pavement.

Does he get dispirited? You bet. But even those dark hours serve a purpose, he recently told me.

“Certain things get clarified when most of it's taken away, y'know?”

Sometimes it's the bad stuff that brings the good stuff into relief. Some people just seem to naturally get that. Me? I need reminding.

Not long ago, I wrote about how irritated I get when businesses who treat Veterans Day as some national shopping holiday. Soon after, Dean Varner, of Cedar Rapids, wrote to say he agreed, but his focus was on thanking those - like Hy-Vee and Sparkling Image Car Wash - who do honor the holiday's spirit.

Or the woman whose house recently was consumed by fire. “It's only a house,” she said when I offered my condolences.

How lucky I am to have a dog that needs tending, a child that needs prodding, a house that needs cleaning, work to do. How lucky and how blessed.

And how lucky I am to know such remarkable people who remind me that for every thing that is lost or broken or going wrong, there is so much more that isn't.

I'll be thinking of you tomorrow, and I truly will be thankful.

Jennifer Hemmingsen's column appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Contact the writer at (319) 339-3154 or jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com