by Laura Seddon

Created on: August 18, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

This Thanksgiving, I decided I would be mindful and grateful for my many blessings. This Thanksgiving, I thought, I will make a genuine effort to do more than say "Happy Thanksgiving" and eat a lot of turkey. First, I made plans to drive to Peterborough to help my teen daughter make her self-imposed exile less awful.

Courtney is currently serving coffee and donuts to strangers for minimum wage. She attends school full-time, and lives in a glorified closet with no heat. While I can't help but admire her independent spirit, I am doubtful about her wisdom. However, like most seventeen-year olds, she knows everything. Coincidentally, every bit of common sense I once possessed, vanished, when she became fifteen. (at least in her opinion)

So, in a spirit of thankfulness for having such a wonderful, if vaguely misguided daughter, I headed North to provide her with a heater, a bit of dcor a la IKEA, and a smoke alarm so that I could sleep at night. My other daughter, Crystal, also 17, and my son, just turned one, joined in the mission of mercy. The plan was; sort Courtney's apartment, stay overnight, then bring Courtney down for Thanksgiving dinner.

All went well, the apartment looked great, and was now warmed by the safest electric heater Canadian Tire sells. Courtney said it made her think of the ads where they go in and fix up a subway car. You can imagine my puzzlement then, when Courtney became progressively grumpier as the time to head back for Toronto came. A consultation with Crystal revealed that Courtney had made plans to have Thanksgiving dinner with her boyfriend's family, but felt she "had to" have dinner with us because of my help.

I suppressed the thought that neither her boyfriend, nor his family had done anything in the past two months to make her home more livable, nor for that matter, had they carried her in their womb for 9 months.

Instead, I kindly told her " I don't mind, thank goodness you have people who care about you." and we went on our merry way back to Toronto sans Courtney.

So, late Saturday evening, Crystal, the boy, and I rolled into our driveway. I noticed my Saturday paper was missing, and that the turkey was in the fridge. When we left Friday, the turkey had been inadvertently left on the counter. I realised this only after battling rush-hour traffic across the city. So I had picked up the trusty cell phone, and asked my sister, Freda, to rectify the situation. Now, noting the paper's absence, and the turkey's movements, it occurred

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