A Tale of Two Thanksgivings

Things that matter.

This was a hard Thanksgiving, but in so many ways, the best ever.

As many of you know, my father began to receive in-home hospice care a few weeks ago. It has been tremendously helpful, and he is in very little pain. He is also alert, more coherent than most people I know, and able to enjoy his food, time with his wife of 42 years, their little doggie Roxie, and watching football. He was also able to enjoy spending time with me, his daughter of fifty years. We got to talk about wide ranging topics from linguistics to Israel to the election.

My father taught me about Israel before I even knew a Jewish person. He is a Biblical scholar who reads ancient Hebrew as well as ancient Greek and a bunch of other languages, and he taught courses on Israel for years at a small college. He took students for the month of January many times. I never got to go on one of these trips - I was always working. But my dad instilled in me a love of a place I’ve never seen, and loyalty to its people.

As I told him about my growing network of Zionist friends on Substack, my worldwide family, he said, “That’s very good.” It was hard to keep from crying, but my dad hates to see me cry. It’s like one more little gift from a father who gave me so much, from my love of history and incredible memory for dates and lots of other things to my inability to do anything mechanical, at all.

I’ve spent almost every Thanksgiving with my father and step-mother for my entire life. While my grandparents were alive, until their nineties, it was a family ritual to go out for a very fancy Thanksgiving dinner at lunch time. We went to the Twin City Club, their social club in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, until it closed. I have fond memories of the baked Alaska. My aunt and uncle, Chair of the Department of History at the North Carolina School of Math and Science and Undergraduate Dean at Duke respectively, always went with us, along with their daughter Holly until she grew up and moved away. When I was little, I distinctly remember that I was the smart one and Holly was the pretty one. I longed to be pretty like Holly, but I was a nerd, waiting for the day when I could get to Yale and cash in on the fact that smart guys often think smart girls are pretty. I was pretty too, but always the smart man’s pretty girl. If I didn’t desperately need glasses to even survive, I’d wear fake ones just to signal “I’m the smart pretty.”

I used to worry about a lot of things at Thanksgiving. I’d agonize about my weight, even though I was anything from very skinny to a very good, fit weight. I always felt somehow not good enough. My parents never quite understood my job as a union organizer, and because my grandfather was very anti-union, they never told my grandparents what I did. My chief accomplishment in my grandparents’ eyes was that I went to Yale. I suspect my grandmother suspected much more, but she never told.

In the years when I was working as an organizer, I was so busy but I made good money (after I got an Organizing Director job at age 28), so I gave holiday gift cards to my step-brother’s kids. I was the queen of greeting cards, and always picked out the perfect one for every holiday. Once PTSD and alcohol use hit me like a meteor at about age 40, Thanksgiving became fraught for me because I felt like I had failed everyone. What a shock and a disappointment, this supergirl who had gone to Yale and been so successful. Rehab didn’t fix me, even though my parents spend an absurd amount of money on it. (Rehab doesn’t fix people, btw, and is phenomenally unsuccessful.) But even though I struggled to get back on my feet financially and emotionally, I came for Thanksgiving. Instead of money I started to give really thoughtful gifts, inexpensive but just what everyone was interested in. Things about horses for my sister in law and niece, fencing and computers for my nephew, my dad got many things including many a Yale Dad item and cookbooks, after they adopted dachshunds my step-mother got dachshund themed gifts. Longwood Gardens calendars after we made a wonderful trip there. Things that show that I care even though I can’t show it with large amounts of money.

So many times I would look in the mirror there and feel like I had failed. That’s all over now. I am there, and I am my father’s daughter. We spent incredible quality time together this time. He can not leave the house because he is tied to oxygen to keep him breathing, so we spent time just talking. My step-mother made a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner and my aunt, who lost her husband, my father’s older brother, to a sudden heart attack this September, came over. My step-mother was exhausted from the caregiving around the clock and making the meal, so after lunch they took a nap and I cleaned up the kitchen and did the dishes. It was one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever been able to do for my family. They were so happy to wake up from their nap to a clean kitchen. In these last months and days, these things mean so much.

I don’t have a fancy job, I’m still struggling financially while most of my Yale friends are extremely successful in the eyes of the world, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I was there. We really talked. I got to tell my parents how grateful I am for all the ballets, plays, concerts and art museums they took me to. I love how my dad taught me to love history, how history is in my blood. My aunt and uncle were both history teachers. My uncle taught freshman American history at Duke until almost the year before he died.

“You need to be teaching gifted kids,” my aunt said, and I realized she would know. So far I’ve taught in extremely poor urban public schools, and that is one of the experiences in life for which I am most grateful. Being able to identify with those kids because I’ve been poor and on food stamps and gone without necessary medical care and not known how to pay the rent, being able to connect and really reach students that other teachers couldn’t reach, was amazing. Now, though, maybe it’s time to look at teaching kids a little more like I was. My mom and I struggled financially, but you don’t get to be the child of three total PhDs without inheriting a gift for academics. It’s hard for the smart ones, in ways that some people don’t understand. That’s the beauty of nerd camps like Duke’s TIP program and schools like Yale. Finally you are with people who laugh at your jokes. And an unlimited buffet of smart guys before they all got married to my friends or women who would be my friends if I knew them. Nice job, gentlemen. It was fun while it lasted, and I’m so glad we are still friends.

My father is proud that I am a Zionist. He’s proud that I write and I’m making friends. And that makes me so very happy. We got to laugh about people calling Israelis settler colonialists with no knowledge of the history of the land. It’s relaxing for me to be with someone who gets it, something that has become so much a part of me, and even better that it is my dad.

I came home last night to my beloved kitty who had been well cared for by her cat sitters but of course wanted her mommy. I slept in my own bed, woke up with terrible anxiety about how to pay the bills during a bit of a difficult spot here, but went back to bed and got up with my baby cat ready to be cuddled. She’s twelve but she will always be my baby.

I thought about the year. My dear friend Mark who has been an incredible support in so many ways, someone no one would have thought I would become friends with. My friend in Jerusalem, praying for my family as I pray for his. My new friends who made such an impact in such a short time. The visit with my dad and realizing how little time we have left made me even more determined to move somewhere I can be close to my mom and we can live out what time she has left in peace and safety. We want so little. Just safe apartments and I want a bathtub.

Today my mom and my good friend in the neighborhood who is also in the harm reduction community came over for a late Thanksgiving. We had Chinese food. I roasted Brussels sprouts from the farmers’ market that I bought on a giant stalk. It felt good to have a weapon, and one that you can eat at that! None of us have much money at all, but we really value our time together over cheap Chinese.

I know there are tough times ahead, but I am filled with gratitude and a little bit of peace. I have made it this far by faith. Sometimes that faith was almost down to nothing, but G-d never let me go. You will get to Israel, says the voice in my head. So get back in shape!

I’ve imagined teaching at a Jewish day school. My friend the rabbi who teaches at one says they hire non-Jews to teach general subjects. I value Jewish education for several reasons: 1) It’s a way to maintain Jewish culture in an environment that is hostile 2) They let smart kids succeed 3) Jewish tradition is so much the foundation of Western civilization and it must be preserved. Do they let non-Jewish kids go to Jewish schools? Wait, I have a cat. She does not need to attend a school. She catches mice quite well, thank you. Are you raising your cat Jewish?

I may get the opportunity to substitute teach at Jewish schools as well as other schools where I might like to eventually permanently teach. I love teaching. The great Jaroslav Pelikan, world’s foremost church historian and my college advisor, may he rest in peace, told my father, “She’s not a scholar. She’s a teacher.” I really wish someone had mentioned this to me in 1995 when said conversation occurred, but better late than never. I was a great organizer when I was one, and that was what was needed at the time. At this age I am exciting about developing the next generations. So much is at stake. I do not need to be the mother of biological children to care about the future and to want to have a hand in shaping it. I want to help grow the leaders of tomorrow.

I’ve learned not to be too set on any one path. It is dangerous to become attached to one path, especially in times of crisis or insecurity. It clouds the vision and closes the mind to possibilities. There are so many things I love. Writing, teaching, advocating for those who need help, organizing (in ways), cleaning houses, petting cats. I love public health and academic medicine. I love doing things where I can very concretely help actual people, like teaching or helping people going through alcohol-related crisis. Many of my college friends went into policy or law school and said they wanted to work on the macro level. I like to be deep in the micro. I like to know the people I claim to care about.

I will probably end the year with a great deal of uncertainty. Where I will work, where I will live, how long my dad will live. We do not know - he could live for months or he could go at any minute. All I can do is make the most of the time we have.

That’s all we could ever do, any of us. We just don’t usually know it.

To my worldwide family, thank you for being dozens of bright lights, now into the hundreds. Thank you for sharing your journeys with me and sharing mine. I love how we comment on each other and our mutual friends’ writing. We are a family, though most of us may never meet.

Zionist substack meet up in Israel? Who’s in?