His math sheets are nearly flawless, his pictures drawn with realistic fantasy, his reading quick and the words each understood all through his brain. He’s merely 8 years old but what wisdom and understanding, what culture and vision he has is enough to overflow the gray matter cups of many whole families. He’ll be more than I am at my age, more than I’ll ever be by his death.

Still though, he’s a child now and while I’d love to see a companion in him for travels and tribulation, he craves his fellow children, wishes for playgrounds and a dog for a best friend and routine. I am not aware of the appeal of routine, personally, but if we are alive and conscious, and consciousness is the ability to determine right from wrong through self-awareness and the realization that others exist in the same manner, then my pursuits as a parent are the struggle triangular between teaching through example, minimizing tears in his biggest blue eyes, and not trading one life for another.

I am thankful, like a Turkey still living on Black Friday, for my son and his understanding and willingness to have allowed me the freedom to do this traveling over the past year. I know his patience grows thin for the open road these days, and in return for his goodwill I will find us some place where fellow children can be met and counted on to be there in the longrun, where playdates can make themselves a common occurrence, where an actual bed can be the very same place he falls and asleep and wakes up for days into months at a time. I am thankful for his hand massages. I am thankful for his Play Doh sculpture gifts and love of long walks to sleep in tents in forests with me.

I am thankful for Germany, that country with a rather tarnished reputation, but still, I am thankful for its creating my bus and what wonder that feat of engineering has bestowed upon me over the short time I’ve lived and loved in her. I am thankful for the country which produced my greatest great grandparents and gave me my last name, my son his as well.

I am thankful for whatever culmination of childhood events provided me with attitude I possess which indicates no other possibilities for my mind but to follow my heart, for my shoes but to follow my instincts. By reaching for the unattainable I have been given nearly everything I could ever imagine wanting, and none of it came with much of a price tag while all of it came with enough valuable worth to make me know that, while I hope to ripen old through many future decades, if I were to die tomorrow I truly believe I have experienced vast more than my fair share in this world.

Thanksgiving doesn’t call on us to purchase plastic nothing for each and every person in our lives, trading landfill paper wrapped future closet space waste or Goodwill fodder. Thanksgiving doesn’t come stuffed with cheesy canned movie trailers and commercials where bad actors make humanity wonder if they’ll ever live as much as the random odd puppies and candy covered chocolates parade. Thanksgiving celebrates nothing but it’s namesake, sharing food and time and nothing much else is required with family or friends. It doesn’t result in three months of credit card debt. May your days be filled with the family, food and football of the holiday, and if the holiday is truly based on a gesture of initial goodwill between the native men and women of this great Turtle Island continent and my ancestral European dreamchasers, then I am thankful for that and will relish their memory on the shores of Florida’s coast with every ounce of my ability.

I’ve met only four people whom I can be certain have had to pee in something other than a pool, a toilet, or the great outdoors. The first was my grandfather, a retired miner, WWII vet and retirement farmer. He’d piss in a Mountain Dew can while driving around, apparently too busy singlehandedly running his farm to pull off into a field and relieve himself, and then upon returning to the house would try and get us kids to drink it. I still wonder to this day if he would have, were we foolish enough to go through with it, actually let us do so. The second two people are myself and my son, and the final is mine and Tristan’s dear friend who’s traveling in a similar manner to our own. Living in a bus, sleeping in parking lots, sometimes you have to pee and there just isn’t a suitable outside, outhouse or outlet mall to do so in.

My point here is, that if you’re poor, you don’t really need a pot to go to the restroom. Just don’t live in parking lots, find yourself a tree. If you’re rich, do you really want to be peeing in the same place you make your morning tea?

Ridiculous.