Thanksgiving Day on the Gulf Coast is always the same.

Somehow it’s always around 70 degrees and sunny and then as the sun starts to wane in the late afternoon, it gets just cold enough to spark up the fireplace.

We always spend Thanksgiving with my in-laws, who are lucky enough to live in a house with this view.

I know a lot of you probably think an ideal Thanksgiving is held somewhere chilly where any venture outside involves crunching brown and yellow leaves under your boots.

But I think a warm Thanksgiving spent gazing at the ocean is sheer perfection.

This year, the 4-year-old could not understand why he couldn’t go swimming. It simply would not compute.

Here we were at “the beach” and it wasn’t snowing or anything…

With his enormous capacity for repetition, Asher asked me, oh, 8 million times if he could go swimming from late morning until about 3pm. A lot of that asking was back-to-back.

“Can I go swimming?”

“Not today. The water is too cold.”

“Can I go swimming?”

“I said, not today. It’s winter time. We swim in the summer time.”

“Can I go swimming?”

“Ugh. No. No swimming today.”

“Can I get in the water?”

“That’s the same thing as swimming. No.”

But, as will always be the case, there came a time when I did not have my eye on the ball for a few minutes.

He asked one of the 30 or so Thanksgiving guests if he could get in the water. I’m not sure it was even someone he knew.

That person, I think, sort of shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

He disrobed.

I mean, completely disrobed.

Before anyone could blink, the child took off his boots, his shirt, his pants and his underpants and ran down the steps into the water.

Just completely stark naked in front of the entire group, some of whom had just met him an hour or so before.

Eventually someone came into the house and uttered the dreaded question, “Have you seen your son?”

I walked to the edge of the yard, and when I called his name, he turned around with the brightest, happiest smile you’ve ever seen and yelled, “Come splash like a dolphin!!!”

So, even though he’s clearly picked up the sneaky strategy of asking his question to whomever is around until he gets the answer he wants, I am thankful for moments like this.

And thankful that his daddy was there to capture it.

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