“Let me start by saying thank you to Felicia for inviting me to make a guest appearance. This is hugely satisfying to someone who grew up rehearsing what she’d say to David Letterman in the unlikely event that she was not busy delivering a thank you speech at the Academy Awards. In fact, I have spent much of my life practicing saying “Thank you” for honors that I never received.
In other words, gratitude is more complex than my parents ever taught me. After meals, my sisters and I would fold our hands, bow our heads, and give thanks for the food we’d just eaten or else surreptitiously fed to the dog under the dining room table. “We thank Thee, Lord, for meat and drink; we thank Thee, Lord, for everything: Amen.”
How nice it was to cover everything so quickly, and believe me, many speed records were set at that dinner table! Turns out only one thing was missing from that everything: Meaning. You see, meaning comes with naming. English teachers are not the only ones scribbling “Too vague. Be more specific” in the margins of our life stories. What we fail to name will elude us, just as certainly as, even if, as in Orthodox Judaism, we give it a name so holy we dare not pronounce it. Naming adds meaning and momentum.
At the dinner table of my childhood years, no one was really grateful, except maybe those who’d experienced the Great Depression years. At my family’s Thanksgiving table today, though, before the soup tureen is brought out with its tantalizing curls of steam spilling out the ladle slot, there will be a wide mouthed ceramic urn in the middle of the table. In this urn will be as many little slips as I can stand writing out the night before, each about the size of a fortune cookie paper. The urn will get passed around the table and each of us in turn will reach in and pick a slip to read aloud and complete.
“This morning I was grateful for clear skies for my drive here,” says Auntie Jo, beaming more brightly than any November sunshine. “The last time I got really sick, I was thankful for Kleenex with aloe and for over the counter Claritin,” Kenny announces without hesitation. “What I am thankful for more often than anything else is health,” says Jesse, to a chorus of “Boo!” and “Too boring!” “Right now, I would like to give a special thanks that Aunt Nancy stopped trying to improve her absolutely perfect dressing recipe finally and putting things like chestnuts in it!” says Madeline.
Everyone will get to speak a specific gratitude. Some people will answer in a way that makes us laugh. Almost everyone’s answer will bring out smiles. Some will be so serious that we all grow somber for a minute; others will send us into giggles. Almost assuredly at least one reply will provoke a little political repartee and another, probably from my dad, will elicit groans because it will be something predictable about patriotism that he manages to get in every year.
And when my mom answers, no matter what she says, we will all struggle not to cry because this year is the last time she will be at the table with us; her time on earth is very close to being done. Every answer will bind us more closely.
We are most grateful for her and for the years we have had together, rushing through our table prayers, spinning through our bedtime prayers, mumbling through the endless church prayers, but thankful every minute for the love that holds us together around this fine old table. This year, wherever you are, speak some specific gratitude. Tell someone you are thankful for the love or just the plain old time and the stories they have shared with you. Tell them even if you need to call them on the telephone. You don’t always get another chance, which is no less true just because you’ve heard it before."
My mom was not with us at
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