Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all are doing well. As you read this, I am traveling with my family from Prague to Vienna as we spend the week visiting my daughter who has been studying there this semester.

Since I knew I would be missing classes this week, I shared my Thanksgiving message last week with students. I told them about an experience I had four years ago this week. It was Nov 2020 (the height of COVID) and I walked into a diagnostic testing center in NY 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. A moment later she tried to hand me a piece of paper while asking me if I wanted her recipe for cooking a turkey. I thanked her and shared that I wasn’t going to be cooking a turkey that year… it was going to be a very small Thanksgiving due to COVID, but she insisted that I take her recipe. She had a bunch of them in a folder and she handed one to me. Here it is:

Her eyes were smiling and I could tell she was watching me as I read the recipe. My eyes smiled back as I laughed and thanked her. It was the height of a dark time and I felt lucky in that moment to be the recipient of her recipe for a little bit of joy. I have looked at this recipe every Thanksgiving since. It helps me realize where I am now versus then, and I always thank her in my mind for offering it to me when I really needed it. This experience continues to be a reminder to me of how 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.