A Song of Thanksgiving

We were, I've read, thisclose to following the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin in making the turkey, and not the bald eagle, our national symbol. I'm trying to envision Cutter with a pop-up timer in his belly button (or her belly button, I don't pretend to know the sex of the Defenders' mascot and firmly support Don't Ask, Don't Tell). Perhaps it's just as well, since I have difficulty wrapping my brain around the notion of Hunter S. Thompson embracing Wild Eagle (not) and Ibogaine as essential tools in gonzo journalism. The road not taken.

This hasn't been the best year for our nation and for many of our neighbors (and perhaps ourselves) and it's far too easy to regret what we don't have rather than pause for a moment to be thankful for what we do have. That, for the most part is what today is more or less about.

I equivocate because there are people, public safety and public health workers and others who don't have a holiday because of who they are and what they do. I don't know how many millions of us work shifts, but there are many and their time off differs from others. For vast segments of the country, today is a prelude to Black Friday which starts earlier every year (as does the decorating, store front displays, holiday music etal) until quite soon we shall go directly from Independence Day to Christmas and children will no longer be born in hospitals but in malls.

Haste makes waste and also makes us less grateful for what we have and for the effort it took to possess it. It was many years ago, but I can remember being grateful for sharing an American custom with my bride, who was (and remains) a German citizen in her country where the fourth Thursday of November traditionally falls before the fourth Friday of November. As the years went on, we were to celebrate this holiday with our son and, later, our daughter, both of whom have lives of their own now and who come to visit us in a very different home, in a different part of the world from where we all once lived.

The expression 'home is where the heart is' takes on different meanings today for my brother, Adam, and his family, since his bride and their son are heading to Rob's new work in Wyoming, leaving my brother and their daughter, Suzanne, to a different holiday table than they've had in years past. And while there's the pain of absence, I suspect all of them are grateful for the memories of what they've had and will have again as times and circumstances permit.

Sometimes you appreciate more what you once had when it's absent. I have to remember and be thankful for my other brother, Kelly, and my three sisters, Evan, Kara and Jill, and our mother, Joan, as well as my wife's siblings, Beate, Klaus-Peter and Gabrielle and their mother, Anni. We are, in sum, everyone we've ever known (sorry for dragging down the cumulative, everyone, but thanks for being who you are).

Of course, our national frame of reference is the First Thanksgiving in 1621. The handful of Pilgrims who had survived the voyage across the Atlantic and the hazards and vicissitudes (something about Pilgrims makes using that word mandatory) of the New-but-growing-older-by-the-moment World had every reason to be grim, but then grateful and thankful for the generosity of Chief Massasoit and his Wampanoag tribe.

In a way, this is a brave new world in which we, too, are now journeying. Much of what we believed and thought we knew, politically, socially, financially and philosophically has been altered and, in whole or in part, swept away by what is coming and what is yet come. With all of our wealth and power, we cannot hold a moment longer than our forefathers could or longer than our children's, children's children will. But we can cherish what we have and share it among ourselves, actually making the blessing greater even as the number partaking of it grows.

For all that we have or will ever have, to include that which we have lost, we shall always have one another and this moment together. To ask for more is beyond the bounds of this day and to settle for less is too tragic for words.
-bill kenny