Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Leftovers

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Phase 1 of the holiday season – Thanksgiving. I always say it’s my favorite because there are no presents involved. I’m not sure that’s true, but it suggests I have an altruistic side.

Now, with the holiday over and another approaching, I’m thinking about leftovers. Don’t you love them? The best part of Thanksgiving!

Leftover 1: Gratitude.  Last year neither of my two children and their spouses wanted to host Thanksgiving. They seemed to have caught the rest of the country’s malaise about it, too much work, with football and maybe turkey as the only reasons to get together. But, remember, I’m the person who says it’s my favorite of the holidays, so it seemed appropriate that I step up and host.

I was new in my apartment after selling Jim’s and my house, which had been the center of many family events. Could I possibly host Thanksgiving? In an apartment? I remembered a favorite movie, Hannah and Her Sisters, where Mia Farrow hosts her big family in a New York City apartment. If Hannah could do it, surely I could. So, I hosted Thanksgiving with good help from my family. And it worked. We gave Hannah some competition.

As that 2024 Thanksgiving grew to a close, we were scheduled to move to another family’s house for dessert, a tradition we started several years ago. But I was exhausted. I’d burned my wrist draining the potatoes, and it hurt. The kitchen was presentable, and all I wanted to do was sit and watch mindless TV—yes, something even more mindless than football. So I didn’t go. AND I announced that I was passing the baton—someone else had better step up and do Thanksgiving next year.

 “I am too old for all this work, and I’ve done my share!”

So, when Thanksgiving came around this year, my daughter stepped up, yet somehow, on the morning of Thanksgiving, I found myself responsible for an apple pie and the mashed potatoes. Everything that could go wrong did, and I barely finished in time to get to my daughter’s house.

During the entire time in my kitchen, I whined to myself, “I passed that baton. This is ridiculous. These potatoes are pathetic, mushed, not mashed potatoes, and the pie. Why did I agree to sit and peel apples and potatoes? And what’s wrong with my kids that they wanted mashed potatoes from Costco? Have I raised lazy children? . . . ya da ya da ya da.”

And then it hit me – sometimes the Universe does need to smack you pretty hard. I realized that husband #1; husband #2; husband #3; some old boyfriends and my sister (all deceased) would have given anything to be in my shoes: 81 and still mashing potatoes and partying with family

Who cares about potatoes or pie—I was getting to enjoy Thanksgiving with everyone I love. I was getting to make pie and potatoes for them. Getting to do this (see https://designingyour.life/), became my new mantra. My resentful, “I HAVE TO” went “puff” and left the room, leaving gratitude in its place.

Leftover 2: Intergenerational Conversation. Last year as dinner ended, we started a discussion about AI. Everyone at the table had a stake in AI. I was teaching an undergraduate writing course and struggling to convince students that you can’t learn to write if ChatGPT writes your paper.

The discussion was fast and fun; no one left the table to watch more football, which means something. We are a family of frogs, we jump into the pond quickly. Our one turtle, Luisa, is often left standing on the bank; she jumps in later, usually with great wisdom.

This year, we’d finished eating and were lingering in the kitchen, snitching bites of dressing and turkey. Elizabeth, my daughter-in-law, asked her 24-year-old son, Henrik, if he wants to have children. I don’t remember how we landed there, maybe because two of our young people are about to graduate from college. Henrik never did answer, but the question kicked off another great discussion about the uncertainty of the future, mainly the planet, and how grim it looks to Gen Z.

The future, by definition, is uncertain, but what my Gen Z grandchildren are feeling is more complicated than uncertainty. The word, “existential” kept floating up. Generation Z young people ask different questions about meaning, purpose and identity than the Silent Generation or even the Boomers did. As we talked, they hesitated to share their dreams for their futures, wary of the future of the planet and climate change.

I can’t recapture the opinions, but I concluded that young people are facing problems unique to our time with climate change at the heart of them, especially as the world responds. They are terrified, although they didn’t use that word. (Remember this is an “n” of 3, so ask your own Gen Zers). And yes, we hid under our desks because of nuclear bomb threats, but this is different.

Reflecting later, I realized we had had a family conversation that crossed generations. Gratitude welled even greater in me, couched in concern for my grandchildren. I was, nevertheless, grateful for the sharing across generations.

Leftover 3: Hope. We eventually moved to more mundane topics, but I worried that what I was hearing might be despair. I didn’t want them to throw in the towel for a life of hedonism. So, I later questioned the Gen Z grandchildren separately.

I started with Henrik, “You aren’t giving up on dreams for your life, are you? Embracing a life of hedonism—do you even know what that is?” (Who knows what they teach in college anymore.)

“Don’t worry, and yes, I know what hedonism is. For now, I don’t know what I’m doing after graduation, but you know me, I’m just curious about it all.”

Whew!

Later, in my car with Luisa, who you will remember is our family turtle, never jumping in too soon, I asked her about her aspirations. She gave me even more hope, summing her thoughts up as “I don’t want to miss my life waiting around for the end of the earth, so I’m living it.”

Upon hearing those words, my gratitude for the day swelled into hope. Yes, the situation in the US and worldwide, especially climate, looks dire, hopeless, gloomy, depressing. . . you get it. But along comes Thanksgiving, and the leftovers. We engage in meaningful conversations and emerge with hope, nurtured by connection and making meaning together.

Another LEFTOVER:

From Wendell Berry, Think Little

. . . the world is blessed beyond my understanding, more abundantly than I will ever know. What lives are still ahead of me here to be discovered and exulted in, tomorrow, or in twenty years?

Main Course. . . Patience

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My 16-year-old granddaughter, our “technical consultant,” called me last week in tears that her school, which has been hybrid, was going completely online.  There would be no more “real school” as it is delivered now, with plastic barriers in the lunch room, one-way halls for passing, tables that once afforded group work replaced by desks spaced far apart, and masks, masks, and masks! She said, “Even if we have to wear masks and don’t have as much chance as normal to socialize, it’s still better than sitting at home alone in front of a computer!” She almost never shouts or gets riled, but she was mad and making it known.

“Be patient” I advised. “Your teachers and the principals want to keep everyone safe. I’m sure they have good reasons for doing this.” She wasn’t hearing me, although a few days later when some students started an online petition to keep hybrid school, she said she wasn’t going to sign, arguing that maybe it was for the better since Minnesota is having a real Corona Virus surge.  Patience has prevailed for now, although she loves to dream about everything she will do this spring, when “we get a vaccine.” Her patience for now, is grounded in hope, that dreaming ahead we humans love to do.

We’re having a great opportunity with the Corona Virus to practice patience, and now with the election of Joe Biden, it’s twofold. First we were in limbo about who won and now we now find ourselves waiting for the handover of power. As for the virus, in Minnesota the governor has ordered a significant lockdown for the next four weeks. What can we do but wait—be patient?

That said, being patient is not always easy, especially when confined to the same house with the same people doing the same things day after day. I have four grandchildren, and all of them are experiencing disruptions to their lives that they neither anticipated nor have been taught how to handle. I can remind them that humans have survived many terrible things, world wars, other pandemics, droughts, depressions, etc., and I can express encouragement. Nevertheless, I wish I knew how to do more to help them. 

As a teacher, I learned that one of the most powerful ways to teach is to model, or, by example. Practice what you preach, walk the talk! This was brought home to me when I was teaching fifth grade while in graduate school. I would make note cards to study for a test, and whenever I had a break in my teaching day, like lunch, I’d use the notecards to study. I’d sometimes have students test me with the note cards. One day before a math test, I noticed that many of my students had made note cards about what would be on the test. When I commented on this, they told me they were studying like they saw me study. Wow!  I had not even tried to teach them this strategy, but they had learned it by watching me.

In a reverse of the generational expectations about who teaches whom, my technical consultant granddaughter is the one teaching me how to DO patience.  Her approach is about kindness, thinking about others instead of oneself. At the beginning of the pandemic when schools and everything else abruptly closed, she started calling her two grandmothers every couple of days so we wouldn’t be lonely. She has continued this throughout, and I truly look forward to it, as does her other grandmother I’m sure, who, in her late 80’s, lives alone in South Dakota. Talk about modeling!  And talk about “to teach is to learn!” She teaches me by example as she teaches herself. I am awed.

Last week my other granddaughter texted me that she missed my sloppy joes. It’s a custom in our family to get together to celebrate birthdays, and I make sloppy joes. I told the technical consultant granddaughter about this text, who immediately said, “You should make some and take them over to her.” I did, and as I set them on the doorstep, I welled up with pure joy—I was doing something to help, making the waiting just a tad easier.

When our governor nixed even outdoor gatherings for Thanksgiving, I was angry. In my family, we know how to gather around a bonfire while socially distancing, which was what we had planned. I remembered why Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. It’s a holiday not about gifts or elaborate decorating or religious significance. It’s about celebrating our many blessings, the reliability of a sun that rises every morning on a spinning planet, rich with everything we need; strangers, friends, and family who mostly want to live right lives; and moments of joy and love.

Henrik, about to mix the filling

While I fretted about how to preserve my favorite holiday, my grandchildren, via a series of texts, planned a virtual pie baking afternoon for Wednesday (We’ve always baked pies together the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving). They are not letting a shutdown order stop them. Who better to forge a new way to celebrate than the young!

Next, our families sent out Zoom invitations to get together for the holiday. So, this year, on Thanksgiving day, after my husband and I have stuffed our chicken and put it in the oven, we’ll gather with our families around a laptop, the province of the young, for moments of joy and love, waiting hopefully and patiently for next year, when we can all be together once again.