Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow and for many of us there will be no family gatherings around the dining room table. This year’s contagion makes it an act of charity to avoid gatherings where we could pass on more than just the experience of dining together. The virus is cunning in its ability to get around our social distancing, hand washing and masking. Regardless, we need to remember this Thanksgiving with special regard. It is the Thanksgiving-in-separation. Distancing makes us realize how important presence is to us.
Virtual meetings and interactions through ZOOM remind us of how we aren’t hugging one another, how were not bringing food to a common table, how we can’t spontaneously look around to see reactions when when Uncle Henry tells a joke or when little Janey’s slice of pumpkin pie lands in her lap. I’ll miss the tradition in our family when gathered around the Thanksgiving feast before grace, we each mention something for which we are grateful. It’s a rare moment of intimacy unique to my family’s Thanksgiving tradition.
Maybe next year, I’ll appreciate Thanksgiving Day in a fresh way. I’ll look around the table and see wives and children, younger adults, the older generation and the newest child and think, “Thank you, Lord, for everyone here. I never realized how much each member of my family has meant to me until the opportunity was taken away last year. But here were are now and as the old hymn says, “It is well with my soul.”
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I haven’t added a post here in a long time. Don’t call me lazy because I have been writing, just not for this blog. My interest moved to enrolling in a class titled “Imaginative Writing.” I hadn’t read much in fiction and far less of poetry. So, I found myself dutifully writing several short stories and trying my hand at poetry. Bottom line: I finished the course with a sense of satisfaction and also a renewed appreciation for writers who can write great stories and keep their focus. Poets, too, help us to see in ways we mortals would otherwise be blind to. I think I’ll look for another class to take which will push me along the road to more interesting writing.
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