I am Thankful for My Little Family

Life is certainly not easier with a child. Or cleaner. Or cheaper. Or quieter. But it is great.

I am thankful for these moments of happiness: Hearing my son talking to himself in the morning when he wakes up; seeing his little head bob from side to side to music; listening in on the laughter that he and my husband share during bath time; watching him walking around while waving toys in his hand, jabbering dadada. I love it when he puts his arms up for me to hold him, then he puts his head on my shoulder and says "aw." I love it when he tries to feed me Cheerios and then cracks up when I actually eat one. I love it when he toddles with his push toy, delivering the newspaper from the front of the house to the kitchen in his little pajamas.

When my husband comes home from work, he rings his bike bell, and my son gets so excited that he kicks his little feet and looks toward the back door, whispering "papa, papa, papa." I know how he feels, because nothing is better than the three of us together. I feel lucky to have gotten the son that I have and to have discovered the dad that my husband is, and I'm so thankful for the little family we have created.

I am Thankful for Good Food

Tonight we ate wild mushroom and chevre pizza and drank wine while we chopped, steamed and sautéed food for tomorrow. This is part of our Thanksgiving tradition, and it reminds me how grateful I am to have excellent food choices all around me.

We get most of our food from a farmers market, but Berkeley has grocery stores with fabulous selections, whether we need local produce or products from other countries. Want fair trade organic 70% dark chocolate? Check. Want black rice? Check. Need half a gallon of whole goat milk? No problem. Recipe calls for saffron? Choose from five options. Our son gets to eat cardamom ice cream, persimmons, Asian pears, organic avocados, goat milk yogurt, and roast beets. What a lucky little guy, I think, as he throws half of it on the floor.

We used to live in an apartment building that had a needle exchange van visit once a week. The needle exchange offered free food to the clients and also to the people who lived in the building. We accepted the food because we were rather poor at the time, living in a mildewy studio in a building with evidently a high number of needle users. There was always cabbage, pasta, and day old bread. I often made braised cabbage and pasta with peanuts; this I remembered when I recently found the recipe that I used to use. We also would go to a bagel shop for a dozen day-old bagels which we would eat for lunch with freshly ground peanut butter. The food budget was low, but we never had to skip a meal.

Good food is all around us, even when we don't have much money to spend on it. It is easy to forget how lucky we are that there is an excess of food available to us, much of it affordable, and not all of it junk. I am thankful for the food choices I have, and I am thankful that my son can be exposed to such a wide variety.

I am Thankful for Health Care

I am thankful and privileged to have comprehensive health care benefits. My entire pregnancy was free, and it was filled with check-ups, ultrasounds, and classes. My unplanned C-Section and the unexpected few days in the hospital were free. My labor did not go well, and if it weren't for our health care provider, who knows what would have happened. Follow-up appointments with a lactation nurse to make sure we had mastered the all-important latch--that was free, too.

All of my son's doctors appointments and vaccines have also thankfully been without cost to us. When he had an abscess on his bum, we were able to email our doctor, take him in for care, get antibiotics, and then call again when we had questions. When he had a 104 degree fever, we were given clear directions and were reassured that we could take care of him at home. Sometimes I grumble that they create too much anxiety in the name of prevention, but I am so grateful for our doctors whose expertise and information is available to us for little to no cost.

As with childcare, it is truly unfortunate that we can't all have equitable access to the same level of high quality health services. I am certainly not any more worthy of comprehensive healthcare than other women whose jobs do not cover maternity and pediatric care. When I reflect upon what I'm thankful for, it is impossible not to imagine the alternative reality that exists for so many.

I am Thankful for Early Childhood Educators

I am thankful that we are able to bring my son to a high quality childcare center that is two blocks from our home and filled with toys, activities, and friends. Even if I didn't work, I know that he would do well in this environment.

I am especially thankful for his teachers. Besides changing diapers, wiping noses, and warming bottles, my son's teachers do the following: create a safe environment that can be explored freely; model how to treat each other gently and with patience; observe each child to learn individual signs for hunger, sleepiness, and boredom; determine how to react and care for a child who has fallen or bumped his head (in a class of infants learning to walk, this probably happens 100 times a day); plan developmentally appropriate activities for the babies to learn about the world around them; talk with anxious and stressed out first-time parents; monitor babies for constipation, allergic reactions, and illness; and of course, they make sure each child is loved.

I used to work at a childcare, so I know that the work is difficult and often underpaid. And while it is rewarding work, it is often thankless and undervalued work. The best way to show thanks? I believe that it makes a difference when teachers are paid a fair wage and have access to the same types of benefits and time-off that I have. After all, what they do from 9 to 5 is far more important than what I do--or what many of us do--during that time.