An attitude of gratitude

Thoughts on Thanksgiving morning

At one time in my life, I was intensely, desperately unhappy. I fled one coast for another, leaving behind a terrible relationship with an alcoholic that had left me with a distorted image of the world and of myself. And when I reached that distant shore, not long after first arriving, I met a group of people who taught me about gratitude.

This is before I learned about my high level of privilege. I have always thought that racism, particularly my own, inherent biases, peel away like layers of an onion. There is always another layer to discover. Understanding I was white, I came from a family with two parents who remained married, I went to college, I had no debt, this and many other things did not resonate for me at that time. But with gratitude, it started to ring deep inside me, like a call to prayer.

One particular day a friend heard my sorrow and said to list what I was grateful for, because, he continued, “I suspect you are not bereft.” The word was well-chosen. It separated out where I was from where I could be, where I had spent a lifetime even then learning many in the world were not so lucky as me to be. I had been to The Middle East, Israel, India, to placed that should have taught me better. So I made my list. Daily.

This practice has ebbed and flowed in my life, but as a mother, married and moving into middle age, we began a practice of embracing a type of grace at the dinner table. Each person had to say three things they were grateful for that day. This is gently requested of guests, as well, and practiced even when just my husband and I sit down to dinner. It’s amusing and at times annoying when your child is at a certain age. For several years there was a great deal of heavy sighing, rolling of eyes and teeth-pulling to get a recalcitrant child to come up with three things. “What about the roof over your head? The discovery of electricity? The fricking meal sitting in front of you???” But of course, this was the lesson I had learned far later in life the we were teaching her. We have so much, even when we feel we do not.

At this particular time of family but also of discord, I will share a moment that I was most grateful in my life. I hope it might resonate for you at this time.

My mother was from the Deep South, and my father from Long Island. They met in the military and my mother converted to Judaism in the early 1950’s, i.e. when it was rarely done. I had lots of Jewish cousins, growing up in Connecticut. They were one long drive out on the Long Island Expressway. But I also had Christian cousins in Arkansas and Indiana. We saw less of them growing up. Things were so different there when we visited; the pace, the food, the weather.

As my parents aged, they retired to South Carolina, where my father had gone to college. My mother never wanted to go back to the south, but their retirement resources would stretch farther there. And when they prepared for the inevitable, they bought plots in one of the first green burial sites in the United States. There is nothing more Jewish than a green burial.

When my mother passed, she passed quickly and unexpectedly. My husband and I were far away and it was hard to get back in time for her to be laid to rest. But I was in the country when my father died. We went to the small town in South Carolina to say goodbye. It rained. The soil in the Carolinas is red clay, heavy and hard. And as we walked into the forest to bury my father, I watched my cousins, who drove from Arkansas and Kentucky, stand shoulder to shoulder with my Palestinian husband to shovel out my father’s grave. My Jewish cousins did not come, nor can I recall going to my Uncle’s funeral, either.

We may vote very differently. We may pray very differently. But today and always, I am grateful for those cousins, for our respectful disagreements, and for their respect for family. I know this is a small personal story. You may rail against it, not knowing that one of them has a trans son, not knowing one lost the family business, that despite our major differences I respect them and their choices, though vociferously disagreeing with them on several points.

But I am grateful for everyone in my life who teaches me to peel the layers away.

May you find gratitude every day, even when it is hard, and have a good holiday with those you love.