Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Thanksgiving 2005: Destiny's Child

Rich Galen

Friday November 25, 2005

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This is a reprise of the Thanksgiving MULLINGS written in 2002. The references are to the events which had ensued in the year following 9/11.

Please, this weekend, take a moment and say a prayer of Thanks for those brave Americans; not just in uniform, but also those who are civilians serving in far away places, away from their families, keeping us safe so we can enjoy our Thanksgiving dinners safe from fear, and from want, and protecting our freedom of worship and of speech.

Rich

Thanksgiving 2002

This year's Thanksgiving Mullings was going to be the written version of a huge sigh of relief: We got through the year.

While we were still dealing with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Anthrax scare caused us to examine every piece of mail which came to our offices, closed House and Senate office buildings, and brought the fear of terrorism into our homes.

The Middle East occupied our attention as the Arab-Israeli conflict flashed onto our television screens.

On the heels of all that, the economy sagged and sagged and sagged.

As if that weren't enough, the Washington, DC region went through the three-week dread of random sniper attacks which ended with the whimper of the two murderers having been arrested while asleep in a rest area on an interstate highway in rural Maryland.

That's what this edition of Mullings was going to be about.

Then I went to the car wash.

The day before Thanksgiving I was giving the Mullmobile it's quarterly treat: A professional car wash. At Andy's Car Wash in Alexandria, you drop your car off, then go inside to pay. A woman and a little girl - about three-and-a-half - were paying ahead of me.

It was a cold day, so the little girl was bundled up in the way little girls are on cold late-Autumn days.

Ignoring the advice of The Lad, ("Dad, just because you CAN talk to everybody in the world, doesn't mean you HAVE to talk to everybody in the world.") I asked the woman what little girl's name was.

"Destiny," she said, beaming. "She's my baby."

In the way of precocious little girls, Destiny asked me where my car was. I told her it was right behind her mom's.

Destiny looked up and me and asked me if my car was going to be a shiny as her mommy's.

I said I hoped so, and I asked her how shiny her mommy's car was going to be.

She thought about this, with that look of deep concentration little girls assume when contemplating great concepts. Then she looked back up at me and said, "Rainbow shiny."

The magnificence of that phrase took my breath away.

The problem with looking at the world through middle-aged eyes is we never see things as being "Rainbow shiny." Even on those rare occasions where we see things as beautiful as a rainbow, we know from long - and often harsh - experience that rainbows are, like fame and glory, fleeting.

But for Destiny, the world ahead of her is as beautiful as a rainbow. Everything in her world is decorated with the bright hues and gentle shadings contained within the infinite colors of her rainbow.

On Thanksgiving day, we should try - just for a few minutes - to look at our world though Destiny's eyes: Look at our world as "Rainbow shiny."

Even though we know it won't last, we can enjoy it while we look around the table eating the wonderfully familiar meal, telling the well-told stories, to the same precious people, while remembering fondly any who are missing from this year's Thanksgiving dinner.

As Destiny's mom was strapping her into her child seat, I caught Destiny's eye and pointed to her mom's clean car, smiling and nodding, and I blew her a kiss.

Destiny, in the way of little girls, hid her eyes and giggled.

This is another kiss to Destiny: Thank you for reminding a grown-up that if we look softly enough we, too, can see the world as "Rainbow shiny."

That little girl is destiny's child. All children are.

Happy Thanksgiving.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: All four of the "Freedom" paintings by Norman Rockwell. Note the dates these were published in the Saturday Evening Post. World War II had been dragging on in Europe and Asia for nearly four years and we were still more than a year away from D-Day.

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