5 Things I’m Grateful for This Black Friday…and Always

Photo: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

These people, places and things (but nothing with a SKU or UPC code) are bringing me joy and gratitude this Black Friday – and all year long.

5. Living and working in New York City

Despite my love-hate relationship with the city – its noise, crowds, transit system, and other offerings, good and not so good – there’s nothing quite like helpful New Yorkers, bodega coffee, or crossing 23^rd Street against the light on a holiday morning when New York shows us its quiet side.

4. William, my trainer

From crunches to rowing, lifting to running, boxing to jumping, the two hours I spend under William’s guidance each week make me a partner in caring for my body, building physical and emotional strength, and expanding my world with a small view into the life of an Ecuadorian immigrant family.

3. Health and the insurance to help guard it

A visit to the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center right before Thanksgiving each year not only reminds me not to take my health for granted, but also to remember the hundreds of people who, whether they know it or not, play a role in ensuring my inherited genetics don’t determine my destiny.

2. The minyan at Temple Shaaray Tefila

In a large congregation, it’s a blessing to slip into “my pew” on most Saturday mornings and to connect to the people around me, and the prayers, music, and rituals that will unfold in the coming hours. Torah study, too, connects me to my (ancient) people, unchanged by the millennia, but ever-changing because of my own new perspectives, knowledge, and “ah-ha” moments.

1. Family and friends

More than an individual's presence, it is the love, support, joy, laughter, humanity, honesty, attention, time, and more that we share with one another that makes my life rich and full. Thanks to the people in my village and in my world – near and far, new and not so new, known and unknown – I truly have everything I need.

Ten Random Thoughts on Black Friday

Ever wishful for time to think and read and write, I am grateful for today -- which afforded me the opportunity to do all three. Sitting in a coffee shop on Sixth Avenue and 12th Street, I had the time and inclination to record these random thoughts:

1. Sometimes it's good to get out of your own neighborhood. My travels today took me to Stevdan Stationers, my intended destination, and then, quite by accident, to the coffee shop next door. It's orders of magnitude better than the ubiquitous Starbucks, and ignited a desire to seek out other non-Starbucks coffee places in the city.
2. "Stuff" is the thing least likely to lead to happiness. In our culture, unfortunately, today is all about acquiring stuff, resulting in lots of people looking for happiness in all the wrong places.
3. Although I did a bit of editing on several different blog post submissions this morning, I'm grateful to be able to put aside -- at least for a day or two longer -- the anxiety and stress that comes from having to find, or ask someone to write, a Ten Minutes of Torah essay for every single week-day from now until....forever.
4. What was Old Navy thinking when their marketing people chose this as the store's holiday slogan: "Hi, holidays!"? Surely they weren't thinking about Rosh HaShanah or Yom Kippur, right?
5. Perhaps it's the springtime weather, but Thanksgiving and the weekend don't have the same joyful feeling they did when I was younger. Is it because the holiday and the days that follow (and precede) it have been co-opted by retailers? Or, is it because I'm not the same person I was back then?
6. I wonder what the world would look like if everyone unplugged from their electronics for the weekend -- or even for the entire period from now until and the end of the calendar year. Would we talk to each other on buses and subways? Would we read real, hard copy books? Would we have withdrawal from Facebook, Words With Friends, Tetris, and Candy Crush?
7. Speaking of all things candy, I was distressed to see in a gift-giving guide in today's paper that Candy Land, a staple of my childhood, is considered "vintage," and a part of Hasbro's "Retro Series" of board games. Oy!
8. I'm extremely grateful for many things -- at this season and always -- but I think I would be more appreciative of my job, and of having a job at all, if my current one wasn't two jobs rolled into one. This scenario -- and my inability to right what is, to me, a problem -- makes me angry, negative, and frustrated -- when I'm in the office and when I'm not.
9. I'm trying to learn to leave the office at the office (even if that happens regularly at 7 or 8 or 9 o'clock) and to swap frustration for fun, anger for joy, and negativity for gratitude for the goodness around me. It's a hard lesson, and in this matter, I'm not a particularly quick study.
10. And yet, despite the frustration, the anger, and the negativity that I seem to have allowed to seep into every corner of my life, as I watch the passing scene on Sixth Avenue, I'm perfectly content to be living life with the cards I've been dealt. When all is said and done, I suppose there's no more satisfying Thanksgiving realization than that!

Wilbur Cross’s Proclamation

When I was growing up, Thanksgiving dinner didn’t officially begin until my mother had read some prayer of thanksgiving, whether from the pages of a siddur or clipped from the newspaper earlier in the week. 

Sadly, that tradition has fallen by the wayside in recent years.  Tomorrow, I intend to resurrect it, although it is somewhat likely that my plan will meet with objections.  Should I give in to them and not read the piece I’ve selected, I’m sharing it here in the hopes that it might get a well deserved reading at someone else’s holiday table.

I’ve chosen the now somewhat famous 1936 Thanksgiving proclamation of Connecticut Governor Wilbur L. Cross, who was a Shakespearean scholar and an esteemed professor of English at Yale.  His eloquence catches the ear and, seven decades after he penned it, his message remains timeless: 

Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of Public Thanksgiving for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth -- for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives -- and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man's faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; -- that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.

May each of us appreciate the blessings that are ours, savor the company of family and friends, and not overdo it with the mashed potatoes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Modim Anachnu Lach*

On erev Thanksgiving, perhaps more than on any other night during the year, we take stock of our many blessings.  And, despite the sadness and loss my family’s experienced this year, we, too, have much for which to be thankful: 

We—my father, my sister, Ian and I—have each other and our precious memories.  Modim anachnu lach.

We have an ever-expanding network of family and friends—near and far, old and new—who call, keep in touch, check in with us, hold our hands, prop us up and propel us forward as we stumble through this year of mourning.  Modim anachnu lach.

We have comfort in knowing that we always abided by my mother’s wishes and that in her last days she was surrounded by loved ones, music, dignity, and peace.  Modim anachnu lach.

We have the work of our hands—that not only challenges our intellect and buoys our spirits, but also betters our world.  Modim anachnu lach.

We have our health. Modim anachnu lach.

We have key information that gives me a shot at life that my mom didn’t have.  To honor her memory, I am compelled to make the most of this gift.  Modim anachnu lach.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

* We give thanks to You.

Update: Ready, Set, Date!

Alas, it appears that I dissed 8minuteDating a bit too fast. Earlier this morning I received an email from them with news of a match. Included was contact information for Guy #5. Thankful for the possibility of further conversaton with him, I'll dash off a quick email shortly.

Right now, though, it's time to go watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

For other musings about our many blessings on this important day, check out my most recent post on RJ.org.

Happy Thanksgiving!