A new perspective on giving thanks

Last year we didn’t have Thanksgiving because our family went to India. I was really sad, at first. It was my first Thanksgiving without my family, away from home, with no turkey or, more tragically, Mom’s famous sausage stuffing.

Instead, we spent Thanksgiving Day driving 150 miles north from New Delhi. We had just completed a 20-hour plane ride with a three-year-old and four-year-old. (And did I mention I was 5 months pregnant?) I was not looking forward to this final leg of our journey. The drive took 9 hours and took us through many villages and small towns. And what I saw along the way will stick with me for the rest of my life.

I saw women washing clothes in streams, banging clothes on rocks to clean them. Women bathing their children in a river or in a bucket next to the water pump. Women collecting water for their family at the local pump and carrying it back to their homes on their heads. Women cooking meals over open fires. Women emptying chamber pots in the open sewer that runs along the road. Women hanging up wet clothing to dry on the tents they lived in. Women harvesting sugar cane with babies strapped to their backs. Women making cow dung bricks by hand along the road. Women sweeping the stoops of their tiny one room homes with no plumbing.

What a sight to see on Thanksgiving of all days. I would watch my healthy, well-fed, (somewhat) clean kids playing next to me with their little princess toys, then look out the window to see thin little girls dressed in rags working in the fields, carrying water or looking after other little ones instead of being in school.

We're certainly not wealthy, but we don’t go without necessities. We have food and shelter and clothing. Am I truly thankful for that simple fact? I don’t think so. I just take it for granted that my children aren't going to bed hungry and we are sheltered from the bitter cold outside.

I needed this trip to get perspective. To get outside my comfortable world I’ve set up for myself here in Philadelphia. To be reminded that the wealth that surrounds us is not the norm. To be reminded of what I have and what so many others don’t.

Despite not celebrating Thanksgiving last year, somehow I think that Thanksgiving will be my most memorable. And I think it will keep every Thanksgiving I celebrate from now on in perspective.

This is an original post to the Philadelphia Moms Blog. Melissa also blogs on her personal blog, Girlymama.