Where would I be without, well, everyone else? My goal for this Thanksgiving day is to notice and appreciate on a continual basis, to realize how much of what I have, what allows me to survive and thrive and experience joy and convenience is due to all of the people who came before me.

Take my home. The land where my home is built once was part of the Osage region. I am grateful to the centuries of people who maintained the land and area, keeping it healthy and in balance for generations to come. I am thankful to the builders of my house, both the family that paid for it to be built more than 100 years ago and the workers who provided the labor. I’m thankful to the other owners and residents of the home, who did maintenance and made improvements through the years before we came to live here.

When I took a hot shower this morning, I thought of the folks who planned and built our city’s infrastructure, allowing us to have water come right into our house with the turn of a tap. I also thought of my husband, who recently replaced a valve after we weren’t getting hot water in the shower.

I put on my jeans, mindful of the fact that someone invented jeans, other someones sewed this very pair, and somewhere along in the course of human history, somebody designed the first zipper, which caught on and made for a very convenient item of clothing.

The brussels sprouts I’m roasting in the oven as I type were grown and harvested by others, and I thank them. They were transported and put on the store shelf by other people. The baking sheet I’m using was manufactured by someone somewhere.

Almost every last thing I have and do was made possible by the efforts of other people who came before me somewhere in the process. And the air I breathe is supplied to a large extent by trees. So I thank the trees, too.

If anyone reads this, thank you for reading, connecting and contributing to the world in whatever ways you do.