I'm thankful for my grandfather, the Lieutenant Colonel. A lot of things in my very military family would have been different if he hadn't served. Right now, he himself would be different. I talked to him tonight on the phone, and he kept laughing with obvious happiness at the sound of my recognizable voice, but unable to say more than these joyful, stunted "yeah... yeah... yeah.." because of the long-term damage from the agent orange he was exposed to in Vietnam. He couldn't tell me where his middle son and wife were taking him to dinner, or how his Veteran's day had been, or my name, or his. I remember before he got bad, he was so sharp, so practical and productive: he used to tell me gruffly, his highest piece of praise: "Keep up the good work." He could be brutally hard on us kids--harder still on my father.

He has grown soft and affectionate as this health issue has taken hold of him. My mom sometimes tells me that she thinks this is a blessing, in a way, that he's so much gentler now for my little cousins' childhood. She tells me stories of the way he used to be as if I didn't live them, as if I didn't know how he used to be when I was growing up. Scornful, contemptuous, exacting. The Tank Commander in everything, barking orders, getting things done, filling up a room with his personality. He was always telling you how something could be done better or more efficiently, how a lack might be turned into an opportunity. This is the same man who as a boy used to wait on the front porch for my worthless drunk of a great grandfather to come home so he could knock him senseless so he didn't beat my great grandmother.

Tonight, I also talked my grandmother, the woman I try so hard to emulate. I feel a kind of kinship with her beyond my hero-worship of her charm, tact, hospitality, grace, and her sheer, womanly grit. Fire in a man can be a beautiful thing. I think she loved my grandfather for being the commander, the war hero. I think she chose him for those hard traits.

I'm thankful for my family and all the facets that make up this weird, beautiful unit of which I am a piece. I'm thankful for the sound of geese flying over head, for little reminders, for a clean sink.