Jackie Ferguson (right), of Roanoke County, with her 2-year-old granddaugher, Ashley.

In an earlier day and age, Ashley Elisabeth[cq] Ferguson wouldn’t be with us today. She would never have celebrated her second birthday, as she did with her large extended family on Saturday.

The little fireball would not be counting to 10, or saying her ABCs, like she does now. Sometimes she needs a bit of prompting with the latter.

The daughter of Lisa and Billy Ferguson, Ashley was born three months premature in 2010. She weighed 1 pound 2 ounces. She was so tiny, her grandmother Jackie Ferguson told me, that you could easily cradle Ashley in one hand.

“Her first diaper was the size of a saltine cracker,” Jackie Ferguson said. “I hung it on our Christmas tree.”

The teeny little girl was in the hospital for three months and there were times when she struggled greatly. A chief concern was the development of her lungs. She was on a respirator for two different stretches.

Many tears were shed and many prayers were prayed that she would make it. And she did. Jackie Ferguson is so thankful.

Hers was among scores of letters and emails I received in a little Thanksgiving Day experiment we started a few years ago that’s called “For what are you thankful?”

You can attach just about every adjective you can think of to the stories that emerge: heart-warming, tender, tragic, funny, and hair-raising  are but a few.

Lisa Ferguson helps her daughter Ashley blow out the candle on her birthday cake. Ashley, 2, spent three months in the hospital when she was born. | JEANNA DUERSCHERL | The Roanoke Times

What ties them together, though, is the underlying  emotion of thankfulness. Today’s the right day to consider that.

Jackie Ferguson is also thankful for many other reasons. She was 19, with two little boy toddlers when her first husband abandoned their family. The suddenly single mom took a job waitressing. Her parents lent a hand with childcare and when the boys were older, the welfare system did, too.

In her early 20s she was waiting tables at Lendy’s on Church Avenue downtown when she met Gary Ferguson, a Roanoke Gas company worker. He and his colleagues used to stop in for coffee before they headed out into the field.

They married when she was 25, and Gary, who had a daughter from a previous marriage, adopted her two sons.

“He’s a wonderful husband and father,” Jackie Ferguson told me. Both her sons grew up and had careers in the military. Read more »

Rochelle Loritts, pictured here during her daily walk at the Green Ridge Recreation Center, had a kidney transplant from her son, Jason Loritts in February 2011. "Thankful is not enough of a word for the love and care I have been given by my family, my significant other, Billy, UVa, many well wishers praying for me and my brave and loving Jason. ", wrote Rochelle. By Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

For what are you thankful?

I put that five-word question to readers around this time every year, in advance of an annual “Thankful” column that runs each Thanksgiving Day. It never fails to produce a torrent of heart-warming and uplifting answers, as well as a few surprises.

Last year, Rochelle Loritts of Roanoke was thankful for a kidney, donated by her adult son, to replace both of her disease-ravaged ones. It wasn’t long before she was off dialysis and feeling like a new woman, walking  5 miles every week.

Thomas Allen sent a handwritten list, which he worked on for a long time.

It started with meeting his wife-to-be at a prayer meeting in the late 1940s. It closed with a story of leaving his wallet in a restaurant in 2011, and later getting it back. The Roanoke County man died the day after he sent the letter.

Families are a focus of much of your thanks. For many it’s hard to imagine life without them. But it’s in the specifics that we find the gems.

In 2009, Allison Rowland of Roanoke wrote that she might not have made it through a difficult divorce without unwavering support from her parents and brother, and her children, a “constant source of love and inspiration.”

READ REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

AND TELL US WHY YOU’RE THANKFUL — READ THE GUIDELINES BELOW.