At the Pilgrims museum in Plymouth last year (yup, a real place, and real trunk.) Ali, in happier times, with mannequins modeling the T-giving look.

​Tuesday afternoon, Ali rages across the field next to our house, tears streaming down her face as she yells words lost to the wind. 
 
The day before, New Mexico (like much of the country) went on lockdown again, effectively shutting down all non-essential gatherings, like Ali’s hip hop class.  This was to be 8-year old Ali’s first hip hop class, and she’s frustrated because she can’t keep up with the moves on zoom.  This was actually to be Ali’s first boots-on-the-ground activity with peers since March.
 
Tired of living in virtual isolation, Ali laments that her entire 9th year on the planet has been dealing with COVID and its restrictions.  
 
There’s something liberating about her full-blown tantrum; catharsis most of us don’t rationally allow ourselves, but probably should.
 
“And Thanksgiving won’t be as fun as last year,” she sobs.
 
Thanksgiving last year was a blast, as we spent the week in Vegas with family friends the Rogers, taking in the Hoover Dam, Cirque de Soleil, shopping, then joining together in a big Thanksgiving meal back in Los Angeles, where neither of us live anymore.
 
Our table will be smaller this Thursday, as will most.  Travel bans are in effect. 
 
But on a deeper level, there are 252 THOUSAND (252,000) empty chairs at American Thanksgiving tables this year due to COVID in the United States alone…among the empty place settings, my friend Andy’s father, Alain’s aunt, Christina’s mother, Kathy’s father.
 
Then, there are those who lost family this year not from COVID: Andrew whose dad died in July, Jill whose husband passed away last month (leaving her and their three children under the age of 10),  Ragon’s dad this past Monday, and of course dear Anna, whose daughter would be in 6th grade had she not tragically and unexpectedly died in December. 
 
This, I realize, is the price of growing older, of living life: to carry the loss of those we love. We survive, carrying the best of them, sometimes buoyed by their spirit, sometimes crushed by their absence. COVID has heightened our losses, while further isolating us from those we still have with us.
 
History shows us we are not alone, or even unique. 399 years ago, by the time the 50 surviving Pilgrims met with the Wampanoag tribe to celebrate what we call “the First Thanksgiving”, a staggering 51 Pilgrims had already perished in the New World.  Even with their sense of fatalism, were the Pilgrims inwardly grieving half their tribe as they gave thanks? Were they burdened by the price of their survival?
 
Nevertheless, they were carrying on with traditions as best they could, because in 17th century England, every yearly harvest was greeted with a festival of gratitude.
 
Gratitude: most important when we may least feel it. 
 
Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer said it better: 
“At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”
 
This year, who has been a spark to you:  a friend, cousin, neighbor, teacher, student, colleague, client, family?  Call. Email. Text. Zoom. Thank those who keep us going. 
.
And let’s remember those odd and unexpected silver linings of COVID: a chance we never would have otherwise taken, an opportunity we created out of lack, a statement we made despite restrictions. 
 
Here are my top 2020 COVID silver linings:
 
1) Carving out a new life in New Mexico in a beautiful new home, complete with this new blog. 

2) Forming friendships with some Amherst classmates, which have grown out of monthly zoom calls started in March after our reunion was canceled. I am genuinely grateful to get to know these movers and shakers better than I ever did in college. 

3) Watching (via video) my incredible cousin Nicky get married in Maine, and Ali’s amazing teacher Cecily (via zoom) get married in California tomorrow. There’s something inspiring about people who stand up for love in the midst of a pandemic. 

And when I feel the loss of what might have been, I’ll look to Ali’s example, and rage when I must. 
 
We have here, now. So like those famous Plymouth residents 400 years ago, let’s celebrate this harvest as the survivors we are. 

Halloween chocolate AND election stress… 
 
For that addictive circle, we can thank the mostly-forgotten President James Polk, who set the first Tuesday in November as Election day in 1845 (because it was mostly farmers voting, and market day was Wednesday).  In fairness to the Polkster, the election sugar/stress addiction is not his fault: trick or treating would not be a thing in America for another 87 years, and even in 1932, they gave out apples. 
 
On Wednesday, I call my 83-year old mother and she blithely says, “Oh, don’t mention politics.” “What?! This election is -”  “Don’t bother to think about politics, because you can’t change anything.”  “Sure Mom, if we don’t think about it, we certainly can’t change anything.”
No wonder my first reaction is to numb out with chocolate. 
 
A landslide of Biden votes was supposed to scream to Trump that famous question from the McCarthy debacle, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” 
Instead, half our country endorses this narcissistic bully, this pathological liar, who is anti-environment and anti-education, anti-science and racist – my lament is interrupted by Tyler, who bounds into the room from preschool and hands me a booklet. 
 
It is a collection of pre-printed things to be grateful for: family, friends, pets, food. The last page is blank, where Ty can add what he is personally MOST grateful for.  He has carefully written: “Monsters”. 
 
My first reaction is: “ummmm. Wow.  Not snow, or candy, or, you know, Mom?” Nope. Monsters. Grateful for monsters.   
 
Now Ty Ty is four, but he often comes out with very profound thoughts.
 
 I mean, in the classroom of happiness, we all know gratitude is the front row. It’s easy to be grateful for the good stuff, but after that….
 
Or maybe not. Life coach Jill Hope recently challenged a group of us to look at our relationship with money by considering whether we feel fear or inspiration when we spend.  I responded that quite honestly, I feel neither inspired nor fearful on most purchases, like groceries, gas, or my cell phone bill. I feel nothing. Jill challenged me to imagine I couldn’t afford to fill my tank or buy groceries or to keep my cell phone on.  Suddenly, going to Trader Joe’s for whatever I want, filling up my tank to go wherever I choose, and using my cell phone for as long as I want sounds quite inspired.  I’ve been on autopilot without knowing it.
 
Maybe gratitude does not come so easy after all. 
It’s that muscle I need to continually exercise (much like my abdomen after all this chocolate).
 
I think of gratitude, and my book groups come to mind. Yesterday, we discussed Say Nothing, a brilliant nonfiction account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. Its title is from a poem by Northern Irishman Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel prize (or as he called it “the N thing”) in 1996.  There is nothing happy about the book: “Whatever you say, you say nothing” is Heaney’s warning, and the tragic price of speaking up reverberates throughout the book.  (Instead of Halloween candy, residents there douse stress with alcohol).
 
Yet Heaney, coming from this land of Trauma, was declared “a poet of happiness” by the New Yorker last year. His Optimism even decorates his gravestone: "Walk on air against your better judgment". It’s a phrase from his poem, "The Gravel Walks”.  I sit with that: Walk on air against your better judgment. 
 
I read that minutes before he died, he texted his wife Marie this message: “Noli timere” (Latin: do not be afraid). And it’s again that choice: fear or inspiration.
 
More of Heaney’s inspiration:
 
“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.”
 
It turns out Joe Biden quoted this at his acceptance speech at the DNC convention this summer. 
 
Time to put away the Halloween chocolate. 
 
Inspiration. Hope.  Gratitude….even for the monsters.  They challenge us to walk on air against our better judgment, after all.