A GRATEFUL OBSERVATION

I’ve certainly got a lot to be thankful for and none of it comes to mind in the context of another conventional American Thanksgiving. That occasion has morphed, from multiple and often mandatory European and pre-colonial opportunities to give thanks for God’s many and varied blessings, to instead, a celebration of the courage and discovery of early European American settlers, their dubious partnership with native Americans in making that foothold a success, and a far more tenuous embrace of the nobility of American initiative and conquest that we are taught resulted in the greatness and good fortune that is perceived to be ours today.

I’m very grateful that the Brewsters and the Warrens arrived in Plymouth on November 11, 401 years ago and that, along with fifty-two fellow pilgrims, they survived—fifty others did not—the daunting obstacles of that first New England winter. I’m not sure we’d be where we are today if the need to muster that resolve was on my shoulders.  Two hundred and eighty-one circuitous and far-flung years later the Brewster’s (11th great) grandson, an engineer on the steamship Governor Bodwell, happened to step fortuitously ashore in Carvers Harbor just as the Warren’s (11th great) granddaughter chose to arrange herself beguilingly on a nearby ledge.  The rest is thanksgiving because they wed and had my Mom.

I customarily rise each morning around 5:00.  I go to my dresser, a wardrobe in fact, in the dark and retrieve underwear and socks.  Then I tip toe to a room across the hall and get dressed in the dark so as not to disturb my wife.  There in the darkness, I have never put my underwear on backwards and then had to remove the garment, turn it around and try again, because my underwear is folded, without exception, a certain and reliable way that allows me to dress confidently and correctly, without light and without fail.  As I grow older, I am increasingly frustrated with things that don’t work correctly the first time.  Putting my underwear on backwards might have been one of those things but it is not and I’m thankful to my wife for taking the time to see that I avoid that unpleasantness.

A team of conscientious Vinalhaven islanders has taken it upon itself to raise money for and undertake the restoration of ‘the bandstand’, a structure that has served this community for over a hundred years, but which was in danger of not seeing many more.  I’m thankful for them and for that project.

And I’m thankful for the emergence of two spectacularly beautiful, prodigious and productive island farms that have, for two years, happily produced for our equally gleeful consumption, all manner of delicious vegetables and fruits, an unknown delight in my lifetime.  They’ve made an enormous difference in our lives.

And, during covid, Elaine learned to make and has since loved regularly making wonderfully delicious and equally photogenic bread and occasional pizza that is its equal.  I’m thankful for that blessing. 

I’m thankful for three delightful and loving grandchildren, one of whom, the youngest, has, during their first year, only scowled once that I know of, that when a tasty morsel they were guiding toward their mouth wound up in their nose.  And I’m thankful to find myself easing into the world of gender-free pronouns with relative comfort.

I could go on and on because I am grateful for so many things but am limited to 600 words so I will end by noting that I am also thankful that the need to teach the inclusive entirety of the history of the United States of America in American schools is gaining ground.