Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in One Word

A holiday post seems sort of odd, but this Thanksgiving dinner was a situation that seems to merit escalation from my personal Facebook page.

Yesterday we had Thanksgiving dinner at our neighbor’s house. Dinner at a neighbor’s is rather common for us. We all sat down around a large table and had a kind of potluck Thanksgiving. The kids—who have all known each other since birth—piled up their plates with whatever they wanted most (including Brussels sprouts), and our host asked each of us—in a kind of Thanksgiving brand exercise—to express in a single word what we were thankful for.

My eight year old blurted his out first: “food,” he said—perhaps influenced by his immediate environment. My middle child—the most responsible—said, “friends,” and then amended that to “family,” again perhaps a response to the environment. My oldest, who is now 14, said “death.”

This certainly got everyone’s attention, and in violation of the one-word rule, she got the opportunity to elaborate: “I’m thankful that I am not dead yet,” she said. She has no terminal illness or morbid preoccupation with death, but it seems that she has begun to think about the bigger picture.

For my part, I concur with the lot of them. I am thankful for food, friends, family and that I am still alive. To this list I would add work, which I enjoy immensely.

Happy Thanksgiving 2011.

Thanksgiving Day 2012

I am reminded of the line from Kira’s recent post: “while you’re freaking out about your balcony falling off, your friend’s house across the street is flooded or burning.” This is all literal in the case of the fall of 2012 for me and my family as well … houses burned, the neighbor’s children killed by falling trees.

We do have much to be thankful for, and my daughter, with her unexpected answer, makes a very good point.

Thanksgiving Day 2013

This year’s Thanksgiving post is about the benefit we obtain from facilitating the dreams of others: Legend of Novo and Other Dreams

Thanksgiving Day 2016

This year’s Thanksgiving is about family and the passage of time. This is a topic that has snuck into this blog on a few occasions. One can see the small girl scrambling around on a castle wall here and then delivering a valedictorian address over here. What happened? We should be thankful that we are witness to these things. I am.

Thanksgiving 2017

As I’m sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with my own family, I’m reminded to be thankful for my client family: from museums that seek to champion women through the arts or encourage empathy for the immigrant experience, to nonprofits that are working every day to provide access to essential health to women and children in more than 20 countries or to allow New Yorkers to stay in their homes instead of the hospital, I’m thankful that my work has meaning beyond the satisfaction of a job well done. I’m thankful that our mission is more than just words on paper: we do indeed get the opportunity to help our clients make the world better.