Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. For the last 5 years I have shared the same story about a brief interaction that happened in Nov 2020 (the height of COVID) the week before Thanksgiving.

All the years I lived in NY I always hosted a large Thanksgiving. Obviously, 2020 was going to be different due to the pandemic. I was feeling the loss of that along with so many other losses we all experienced during that time. 

I had walked into a diagnostic testing center to get blood taken. The waiting room was very empty and I sat down a few seats away from an older woman who was waiting for her husband. We smiled at each other through our masks. We both had that look in our eyes of sadness and fear mixed with acceptance of the current situation. 

A moment later she asked me if I wanted a recipe for cooking turkey. I politely declined explaining we were having a small Thanksgiving  because of COVID and I wasn’t going to even cook a turkey. However she was quite insistent that I take her recipe as she pulled one of a stack of them out of her bag. I could see her smiling with her eyes as I reluctantly took the paper. Here it is:

She watched as I read the recipe and my eyes smiled back as I laughed and thanked her. Her joy was infectious and the joy she received from giving a sparkle of joy to someone else was palpable.

Each year since I have thought about this story and as the years pass by my perspective broadens and the learning does as well. I continue to be very grateful to that woman for her choice to spread a little bit of joy in the height of a dark time. I think about how I almost missed the chance to receive that joy because I wasn’t open to it. 

Remembering this story also makes me even more grateful for this year and the large Thanksgiving festivities I attended last week with my extended family.  I revisit this story as a reminder that glimmers of joy are wrapped in small gestures all around us all the time. Our opportunity is to both offer and receive them through noticing and intention. It also reminds me of powerful those small gestures can be. They have reach and scale and can reverberate out; as I share her sprinkle of joy with all of you.  

This is the giving season, the chance to be thankful, and I am so thankful to all of you who read what I have to share each week. It truly means so much.