Thanksgiving Ride

I drove back to Mississippi to celebrate Jason's recent birthday, his 39th, with a 39-mile bike ride.  We started riding when he was in 8th grade and I was his teacher.  Seven years later, a month before my 39th birthday, he helped drive my furniture in a rented truck to Georgia, as I relocated close to where my family lived - Mom, Dad, brother Todd and his wife and children, sister Kim and her husband, Aunt Harriet and my grandmother Mamaw.

This week, the drive on I-20 for Thanksgiving triggered memories of making that same trip during my 17 years in Mississippi.  Gone are Dad, Aunt Harriet, Mamaw; Todd and his family moved years ago to south Georgia. It's just me and Mom, with Kim and her husband far enough south of Atlanta to be isolated.

Here's the view on Thanksgiving Day, 4/5 of the way around the Ross Barnett Reservoir on bike, a ride I used to do with Jason in the early 1990s.  I remember riding it alone one Sunday morning: faster than now, I could finish in time to shower, eat, and make choir practice.

No need to belabor the metaphors of life's cycles and life's road. For where I've been, for what -- and whom -- I've still got, I'm giving thanks.