The Big Thank You

Here’s a Thanksgiving essay of mine that appeared in Newsday:

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/brody-ready-set-thank-you-1.3341142

Brody: Ready, set, Thank You!

November 22, 2011 by BOB BRODY /

I never thanked my 10th-grade English teacher for getting me interested in literature. I also never thanked my first boss for hiring me for my first job out of college. Nor have I gone back to thank my first girlfriend for granting me, at age 12, my first romantic kiss.

With Thanksgiving here, of course, we’re all on board with the tradition of expressing gratitude. We may clasp our hands in prayer and offer words of thanks to God. We may each take a turn at the dinner table to reveal the reasons why we’re so thankful this year, praising our families, friends and colleagues while acknowledging appreciation for our health, our jobs and just being alive.

But seldom do any of us engage in directly thanking each other — the act of singling out a person expressly to say “Thank you, you made a difference in my life,” complete with a detail or two about exactly why.

As in: Thank you for being my wife and the mother of our children, and especially for making our family your top priority.

As in: Thank you for being my friend, particularly for taking me out to lunch in 2007 because you knew I felt low and listening to me complain about my job for an hour.

We instinctively recognize gratitude to be a force for good. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers cited gratitude as an important virtue. Studies at the universities of Utah and Michigan show it’s healthy both to show and to receive gratitude — the heart and brain appear to function more harmoniously.

Yet all too many of us have limited our use of the words “thank you.” We mistakenly assume all the people we care most about already know full well that we appreciate everything they’ve done. We suffer from a gratitude deficit.

As it happens, last Thanksgiving I launched a personal project to correct the record once and for all. I vowed to personally thank, at least once a week for the next year, someone to whom I felt I owed gratitude.

To start small, I approached my favorite doorman to thank him for taking such good care of our family over the decades. He placed his hand near his heart and thanked me right back for being among his favorite tenants. We hugged each other right there in the lobby.

More ambitiously, I called a former boss of mine to thank her for all her guidance over the years, but especially for refusing to hold a grudge against me after she gave me a big raise and I responded — with egregious ingratitude — “I thought we could do better.” Unable to get her on the line, I left her a voice mail, but never heard back. I’m convinced she dismissed my well-intentioned overture as a misguided prank.

But quickly my little plan to acknowledge everyone deserving of thanks ran out of gas. Life intervened — job, family, television, sleep; you know the drill — and suddenly I lacked enough time to follow through. And so even though I got around to thanking some more people — my Uncle Leonard, my pal Al, my colleague Brian — many more figures in my life, major and minor alike, wound up decidedly unthanked.

Today, however, I hereby renew my pledge. I’m going to track down all those special someones to deliver my special thank-yous. Once again my purpose is simply to do right by people who have meant the most to me — and yes, to clear my conscience over my previous failure to do so. After all, sometimes by going back, we can better move ahead.

Suppose everyone on the planet made a similar promise: a commitment to give people a heartfelt, highly specific thank-you. Parents and teachers would thus be duly honored. Friends and colleagues would feel forever connected. So would grandparents, coaches, customers and, for that matter, former girlfriends and boyfriends. This simple gesture — saying thank you, you matter to me — would promote a needed sense of belonging, a welcome spirit of unity.

And so I propose a public-service campaign. We could recruit celebrity spokespeople talented at expressing gratitude — Steven Spielberg comes to mind; his “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List” are strong in depicting gratitude. Enlist Miss Manners to issue guidelines about following the right etiquette. Stage thank-you free-for-alls in communities nationwide. Hold contests to determine who is thanked the most and who has thanked the best. We could call it all The Big Thank You.

Just imagine the ripple effect that would result. Think of how much it could mean to those doing the thanking and those getting thanked. With all that thanking going on, maybe we would learn to treat each other better, behaving more kindly and generously, than we do now.

Let’s try to make every day of the year feel like Thanksgiving.

Bob Brody, a public-relations executive and essayist in Forest Hills, blogs at letterstomykids.org.

Dear Kids: Thank You

This year I took a new approach to honoring my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. I enlisted seven parents to be guest columnists, inviting each to say, Hey, kids, here’s why I’m grateful for you.

Luckily enough, Lisa Belkin, senior columnist on life/work/family for the Huffington Post, and Janice D’Arcy, “On Parenting” columnist of The Washington Post, liked the concept – parents writing letters to say, Dear kids, thank you – enough to feature it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/23/thank-you-letters_n_1110137.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/spending-thanksgiving-thanking-our-kids/2011/11/21/gIQAcn8jlN_blog.html

Here, then, in keeping with the spirit of the occasion – and humbly offered as what you might call post-Thanksgiving leftovers – is why I’m grateful for my own kids.

Dear Michael and Caroline,

Thank you, Michael, my son. You made me a father for the first time. Thank you for looking so beautiful as a baby, and then as a boy, and now as a man.

Thank you, too, for respecting and trusting and loving your mother, and for recognizing inescapably how much she means to you, and to us all.

And for playing the role of big brother with your little sister, the part of a lifetime, and for admiring her tenacity, and for being ready to do anything to protect her, no matter how minor the threat.

And for dealing so well with being just like me, bearing the blessing and the curse alike, because yes, it’s both, but which more than the other might be hard to say.

And for never speaking ill of any of your friends, even though you probably could have, and of your girlfriends, too.

Thank you, my boy, for so ably impersonating Christopher Walken and that weird cricket-like sound from the monster in the movie “Predator.”

And for your quicksilver wisecracks, especially that one time, when I asked you if you considered yourself short, and you said,“No, just undertall.”

And for how your face looked in the moonlight in Southhampton, when I carried you outside the cottage we rented, how your eyes beamed as you looked up at all the stars glittering in the sky, your mouth opening in awe at the canopy of the constellations above.

Thanks especially for so fondly remembering Grandma Nettie, who still counts so much now and forever, a source of light and warmth for all of us as strong as the sun, and for giving her so much joy.

Thank you, too, Caroline, my daughter. Michael showed me how deeply I could love someone new, and you’ve shown me I could love someone else new just as deeply. In a single stroke, you doubled everything.

Thanks, too, for crying so much as a baby, your cries insistently reminding us, as if we could ever forget, “I’m here, I’m here!”

And for being so hard on the outside, once as a two-year-old taking umbrage at me for daring to challenge you and stubbornly jutting out your jaw and saying, “You think you’re tough?”

But also for being so soft on the inside, talking to your dolls in your room, crying at all the classic Disney movies, growing your hair long so you could cut it and give it away to kids going through chemo.

Thank you, my girl, for climbing that boulder in Martha’s Vineyard at the age of eight to sing in front of our friends. You look so at home on stage and sing and dance with such conviction, always going for the right note, the right step, usually hitting it, too, but if you miss it, always trying again until you get it right. I’m grateful for how intent you get before auditions and shows, how zoned in.

Thank you for cranking out so many real push-ups and showing me yoga and Pilates and once giving me a facial, and for how you looked that day I held you in the pool at the beach club, your face gleaming with droplets of water so gloriously in the sun.

And for eating so nutritiously and for always carrying yourself like a lady, and for never complaining about having the smallest bedroom. And for being so beautiful with your ballerina neck and elegant jawline and perfect, pampered skin and those cherry-black eyes that can win me over or cut me to the quick, depending on your mood that day.

And for being so very alive, your nerves living so close to your skin.

Thank you especially for appreciating everything Mom and I have tried to give you, and for telling us so. And equally so for holding Grandma Nettie dear in your heart, always remembering her all-powerful love for you.

You both came into the world as if from nothing and nowhere. But we know you came from our love for each other and our faith in the future. You each gave me someone new to love, someone I could call my own, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, and also someone else who could love me back.

You are both rewards surpassing anything I might ever have imagined or, for that matter, ever felt I truly deserved.

There. I’ve said it. It’s now a matter of public record. I wish I could catalogue everything I’m grateful about when it comes to both of you, but for now this will, somehow, have to do.

Besides, nothing I could say will ever do justice to the gratitude I feel this and every Thanksgiving. One day I believe I love you both with all my heart, only to find the next day I love you even more. It never ends, and it never will. You are my butterflies, my rainbows, my miracles.

P.S. — Anyone else out there feel the same? If so, let me know.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Biff Barnes: What My Mom Knew

Biff Barnes has been telling his sons, James and Ed, stories about family history for 33 years. Biff is an editor who specializes in creating family history books and memoirs. An educator, a journalist and a widely published San Francisco historian, he works with his wife, Nancy, as partners in Stories To Tell, a company which helps authors with editing services, consulting, book design and publishing. You can learn more at http://www.StoriesToTellBooks.com.

Dear James and Ed,

It’s my 65th birthday today. So I’ll indulge myself in a little bit of reflection.

You guys know that I spend a lot of time telling clients about how to turn their genealogical research into family history books. As their editor I advise them to look beyond the facts they’ve uncovered to the family stories that reveal who those distant relatives were. For in their beliefs and character traits we will find things that shaped us. Family history offers a lens through which to understand who we are.

Looking back across more than half a century I can see the source of values that survive in me and which you have, each in your own way, inherited. Here are two of those touchstones.

The fall of my 4th grade year my teacher got pregnant. In those days the powers that be immediately pulled pregnant teachers out of the classroom. It was shortly before report cards when the substitute arrived. She did the grading. I got all “satisfactories”. That had never happened before. The only “satisfactories” I had gotten were in handwriting; the rest were “excellent.” My mother made an appointment for a conference with the teacher. I had to accompany her.

The teacher was quick to tell Mom what a good boy I was. Then she delivered the line that rings through my memory almost 60 years later: “Biff is a good average student.”

Mom looked her in the eye and said, “Biff will never be an average student. He knows that being average will never get him anywhere. He knows that he needs to work hard enough to be way above average.”

Mom probably understood what I did not. The substitute teacher had no idea who I or any of the other kids in my class were. She hadn’t been with us long enough to find out. Mom might have been looking at the teacher, but she was talking to me. The message was clear and simple: If you want to get anywhere in life, you had better be willing to work for it.

But there’s a flip side to me that seems to believe something diametrically opposite to my Mom’s admonition about the value of hard work. Your Mom, Nancy, Jersey girl that she is, likes to say to me, “Biff, you’re such a Californian.” It’s a reference to the feeling that somehow, through sheer good fortune, I’ll grab the gold ring on life’s merry-go-round.

It is, I think, a particularly western belief that you will discover the path to “the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings in the Big Rock Candy Mountains.” It’s a belief that brought the 49ers across the country. I think I probably inherited it from a man I never met, my grandfather.

An itinerant printer, he traveled the West looking for his main chance. The quest took him to Alaska to find gold in1898. He had more success there as a boxer than as a miner and eventually headed east with pockets empty. On the way he stopped in South Dakota long enough to meet and marry my grandmother before turning west once again.

This time he sought fortune by purchasing a hog ranch in Roseville, California. Hog cholera depopulated the ranch a couple of years later. My grandparents moved again, this time to San Francisco, where my grandfather opened a print shop near 29th and Mission. Grandpa never got rich. Fortune lay just beyond the horizon, but he always believed that someday he’d get there. It’s a faith in the future that my Dad passed on to me.

Knowledge of family stories doesn’t require that you carry them on. It presents you with a choice of which character traits, beliefs and values you want to embrace and which you’d just as soon relegate to the past. My own life has provided a good deal of evidence of the value of hard work and almost none that I will discover a gold nugget that will lead to the mother lode. So when you listen to the family stories it’s useful to have a healthy dose of objectivity.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Jill Smokler: Thanks for Your Giggles, Wet Kisses And Purity of Heart

Jill Smokler, a mother of three in Baltimore, blogs about motherhood — the good, the bad and the scary — at scarymommy.com. Her first book, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, is due out in April from Simon and Schuster.

Dear Lily,

I am so thankful to have been blessed with a girl. I am thankful for the way you take care of your brothers, even if they don’t always appreciate it. I am thankful that your hair requires little combing, because mornings are tough enough as they are. I am thankful that you are polite and well-behaved and I never need to worry about your behavior on play-dates and sleepovers. I am thankful for your love of learning and that you are anxious and happy to go to school each and every day. I am thankful for your spunk, even if it makes things difficult sometimes. I am thankful for your heart, which is the purest one I know.

I am so utterly thankful to be your mother. Always.

Dear Ben,

I am thankful to have been blessed with a boy, even though I was sure I wouldn’t know what to do with one. I am thankful for your fierce hugs, even if I need to bribe you for them sometimes. I am thankful for the kind of friend you are, both to your schoolmates and your brother and sister. I am thankful for how concerned you are for other people, sometimes even more than yourself. I am thankful that you love peanut butter so much, since without it, you would exist almost solely on carbs. I am thankful that your aim in the bathroom has finally improved. (Kind of.) I am thankful that you resemble me, and I didn’t totally lose the DNA wars. I am thankful that you love it when I visit your classroom, and I am thankful for your infectious giggle.

I am so utterly thankful to be your mother. Always.

Dear Evan,

I am thankful to have been blessed with a third child, even though I spent my pregnancy worrying that I wouldn’t be able to handle you. I am thankful for your kisses, no matter how wet and messy they may be. I am thankful for the way your face lights up when you see me at school each day, like it’s a surprise to you that I am there. I am thankful for your resilience, because without it, you would need a full body cast. I am thankful for how funny you are, and the laughs you give me constantly. I am thankful for your ability to entertain yourself, for hours at a time. I am thankful for how much you idolize your siblings, and have perfectly rounded out our family. I am thankful that you don’t mind never having worn a new article of clothing, and that you are overjoyed by something as simple as matching pajama tops and bottoms. I am thankful that you willingly play the role of my baby, even though you are quickly growing up.

I am so utterly thankful to be your mother. Always.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Leslie Long: Thanks, Boys, For Always Being Yourselves

Leslie Long, a friend of mine from high school and mother of two sons, is an Associate Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. She is also a photographer and travel writer (http://www.leslielongwriter.com/, http://www.leslielongportfolio.com/).

Dear Ian and Erik,

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for things both big and small. At 6’ and 6’1”, you are the big things I’m grateful for. While I loved your younger years, I so enjoy the adults (or in Erik’s case, at 17, the almost adult) you’ve become.

Two boys, almost seven years apart in age, you are and always have been individuals. I used to say that the only thing you had in common was blond hair. Now, as I’d always hoped, you also share some other things.

Having come from a quiet family of girls, I was a little worried about being a mother of boys. Would they be wild, hard to control? Ian, being my first son, you laid those fears to rest the moment I saw your cute little face. Lying in the hospital bed while you slept, looking at your tiny features, I knew I had nothing to worry about —and your early years were kind of a dream.

You were so curious about the world, and once you could talk, you asked some of the most intriguing questions. You were always trying to figure out the relationship between yourself and the world. While sitting in the car at five years of age, you said:

“If we were going the other way, you would be over there and I would be over here. If we were going the other way, the back would be the front and the front would be the back.”

You were a model citizen on the playground and in elementary school, too. Spirited, yes. Artistic, too. And naturally athletic.

Erik, when you were a baby, my friend Diane said you looked like a Viking, with your big round open face and happy smile. You always had a talent for figuring out relationships between people and from the stroller, you’d stop neighbors on the street to ask about other family members. Coming from a child who looked too young to even talk, this amazed people. You have always had an innate ability for getting along with people of all ages. You’re comfortable in the world and every day, your optimism is a gift every day. I’ve enjoyed your impressive vocabulary.

You, Erik, shared my love of travel, and were always up for adventure. While Ian liked sleepaway camp, you preferred exploring. Five years ago, while walking through a colorful market in Guatemala, you turned to me and said, “Now this is a whole lot better than camp!”

Dad and I always appreciated the differences between you two, but sometimes those differences made it harder for you to be close with each other. Ian liked to be around town, while Erik enjoyed travel and the city. Ian was a varsity athlete, while Erik had a lengthy skateboarding phase. Ian was completely involved with his friends.

Now there’s more common ground. Ian, you’ve graduated from college and you’re living on your own, enjoying a successful career. Erik, you’re a senior in high school and have chosen varsity track and football as your sports. Fitness, basketball, fishing and golf are among your dual pursuits. You’re both smart, responsible and ever interesting to me. Along with Dad, there’s no one I’d rather be with than the two of you.

Thanks for your similarities and your differences, too. And above all, thanks for always being yourselves.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Frank Cavallaro: Why I Write For My Daughters

Frank Cavallaro, a long-time resident of East Meadow, Long Island, is father to three daughters. Schooled as a graphic designer, he joined several advertising agencies but eventually went out on his own and added copywriting to his list of services. Later in life, he entered the financial services business, where he eventually became a teacher in continuing education.

Dear Laura, Jennifer and Kim,

A basement flood last January forced me and my wife to review some of what we had saved throughout our marriage – in boxes, placed out sight.The years had withered away the sentimental value that some of those items once held for us.

Others had become more precious, like the yellowing letter from my father to my mother, written in blue-black fountain pen ink many years ago. Holding that letter in my hand instantly connected me to him; transcending 65 years, I lived his thoughts at the moment he was writing them. Reading it made me sad of how little he wrote.

When I was a boy, my father told stories about his youth – how he was born in New York, then at four years old sent to Italy to live with family, only to return to New York at age 12, unable to speak English, and how he was bullied for that.

My father told me other stories, too – about fighting back, trying to fit into a new world, the deaths of his two younger teenage sisters and the death of his father.

When he died, those stories died with him.

Unfortunately, the spoken word fades with the memory of the listener.

My mother’s writing was confined to recording times and places on the backs of black-and-white photographs taken during the 1940s, and to grocery lists.Much about my parents will therefore always remain unknown.

Three years ago, I started to write essays to record some of my most meaningful and memorable experiences growing up in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Originally, I meant these accounts to entertain and enlighten you, my three daughters. But you were always too busy or too bored to hear me tell these stories out loud. Soon I had 65 essays in all.

I recounted, for example, how I saw a live chicken beheaded on my aunt’s farm and served as dinner just an hour later. More humanely, I reminisced about my boyhood cocker spaniel.

I also realized that my grandchildren might enjoy these stories, too, and so wove in historical references to matters that had fascinated me as a child – how spiders behave, the steam locomotive, the gravity-defying gyroscope.My hope is they will see the world as I saw it then, and as I still see it today – as a place that endlessly arouses my curiosity.

With any luck, these stories will someday mean as much to you and my grandchildren as my father’s letter does for me.

Eight Thanksgiving Guests: Why I’m Grateful For My Kids

Zelda Baum, my aunt

I’m grateful for my children, each for a different reason. For Link I am grateful that he is such a good father. I’m grateul to God for allowing my son Craig to continue his difficult and painful life, but at least he’s here. He is the bravest example of anyone I know. And I’m grateful for my daughter, Duffy, who is very independent and wonderful in sharing her life with people less fortunate than she. She is active in feeding the homeless. I’m proud my children are all of good character.

Beth Dreyfuss, my friend

I’m grateful for my three kids because being their mother taught me all about my capacity to love unconditionally. It showed me how generous I was able to be. It taught me it’s possible to discipline without hurt. It taught me that I could accept my kids ”warts and all” even when something they’d done appalled me. Being kind to them (with no effort at all) taught me how to be kind to myself. I’m grateful to have seen each have a happy childhood and live completely live in the moment. Thank you, my precious children, whom I love more than life itself, for helping me live a better and more fulfilling life.

Deborah Swan, my high school classmate

“I give thanks every day that my three daughters know the true meaning of family. It truly is a marriage….in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, we will always be there for one another, and for that, I am thankful.

Mindy Gikas, my former colleague

They keep my life in perspective and I’m grateful for every day I have with them.

Arline Zatz

I’m very proud of my two sons, who are honest and smart, and worked their own way through graduate school. One is a dentist, the other an organizational psychologist, but no matter what they might have chosen as careers, they’re proud they’ve done it themselves. My younger son is one of the best dads I know — for he is raising his children to be polite and to value what they have. Seeing them grow and become the men they are is, to me, a blessing.

Kara Williams

Grateful for my kids? Here’s why: This morning after a fresh snowfall, my 9-year-old son asked me to go sledding with him in our side yard. I had a kitchen to clean, laundry to do, work to catch up on. But he asked me so sweetly and genuinely, I couldn’t say no. Tromping around in the snow, whooping it up as we flew down the hill, seeing his reddened cheeks (and runny nose) filled my heart and made me so grateful to have active kids who remind me to take time out of my day – 20 minutes! — to just *be* with them.

Christine McLaughlin

Not a day goes by where I don’t feel grateful for my kids, not just at Thanksgiving time. There’s a lot more laughter in my life because of them and they’ve enriched my life in ways too numerous to list. But having grown up with two sisters and now having three boys of my own, I feel truly fortunate to be able to experience this other side of humanity in my life. I have a much better appreciation for the male “species”– including my husband (who really isn’t that far removed from my sons) than ever before. My perspective has really changed — and improved – and for that, I’m forever thankful.

Nancy Peske

I’m grateful to my son for teaching me the importance of being goofy and letting yourself laugh so hard at stupid YouTube videos you can barely breathe. I’m also grateful to him for reminding me that we should never stop playing. My love for my dolls led to my interest in psychology and I’m sure his obsession with the Godzilla oeuvre will lead to, well, something of value. In the meantime, shouldn’t life be about your pupils growing wide as you explain why Biollante is the most awesome Godzilla opponent ever? Footnote: being goofy and having obsessions are two characteristics of kids with autism and similar issues. So often parents see them as negative and problematic and forget the upsides.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Jerry Elfassy: Thank You, Grandpa Julius

Jerry Elfassy lives in Merrick, New York with his wife Allison and four children, Daniel, Jamie, Logan and Lexi. Jerry is the founder and senior technical advisor of Progressive Consulting, an information technology firm located in Westbury New York (jerry@progressgroup.com).

Dear Daniel, Jamie, Logan and Lexi,

These are the words I recently spoke at my grandfather’s funeral:

I have about five minutes to share 45 years of memories of a man who lived 96 years.

My grandpa, Julius Brodinsky, was born in 1916, in Harlem, New York, the second of five children. He lived with his parents, Sam and Molly, and his siblings, Hy, Blossom, Helen and Freddy.

Because of tough times, grandpa dropped out of school in the 8th grade. He worked many jobs to support his family, including selling newspapers and delivering ice cream and ice. He even rotated the turnstiles at Yankee Stadium for incoming spectators.

My brother Marc and I loved the stories he would tell of all the Yankee stars he saw play in person. Grandpa loved baseball and played all through his childhood. He played pickup games in the sandlots of his neighborhood. He always made sure his older brother Hy got to participate in those games. Hy, diagnosed with polio, dragged a leg his whole life. But that never stopped him from playing baseball with his younger brother. Grandpa would carry Hy to and from the fields and sit himin a chair behind home plate so he could catch and play like all the other kids.

Grandpa was a tough kid. When other kids picked on Hy and teased him, Grandpa came to the rescue and took care of business. He protected Hy as if he were a piece of gold.

At the sandlot, grandpa and Hy sold soda and candy. They even made sandwiches at home to sell to other kids in the fields to make money to help support the family.

Grandpa took classes at a technical high school and played catcher for the team. He even caught a game at the old Yankee Stadium. He was so proud of that.

But his proudest moments came serving his country in the United States military. Grandpa was an Army man in World War II. He saw hand-to-hand combat, rode in tanks, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He told us chilling stories about blown bridges and bullets zipping over his head.

With Grandpa Julie, what you saw was what you got. And what I saw was a hero.

Upon returning home from the war, grandpa started his family immediately. With his wife Pearl, they had three boys, Michael, Robert and Bart. He was hardworking, doing whatever was necessary. He was a truck driver, trucking company owner and trucking dispatcher. More than a few items “fell off the truck.”

One day I met him for lunch in lower Manhattan, where he worked for a trucking company. We ate pastrami and corned beef sandwiches and knishes at the local kosher deli. He had invited me in to introduce me to two brothers who owned a successful clothing company.

Then already 77, he led me through a maze of streets and stormed into the clothing warehouse. He told the two brothers they should do business with me. And they did, for many years, until they closed shop.

Grandpa never asked for much, but when he asked for something he got it.

He lost his first wife Pearl, in 1964, and then met my grandma Ruthie. She had already struggled to bring up three children of her own all by herself, but they married on Christmas the next year and she decided to become a wife and mother all over again.

My brother Marc and I spent our entire childhood with our grandma and grandpa. We spent summers at Buyers Bungalow Colony in Swan Lake in upstate New York. We all swam and played.

As we grew up, living just a block away, Grandpa was a daily part of our life. We ate together, shopped together and traveled together.

One summer, he planted a vegetable garden. He cared for it and we all enjoyed the fruits of his labor. I well remember my grandfather, then 56 — barefoot, in shorts and no shirt – chasing with a stick in his hand the rabbits that tried to destroy the plants and vines.

We are all “fruits of his labor.”

What you saw was what you got. And what I saw was a role model.

I think of the adversity he faced his whole life – the Great Depression, the lack of money, the war and the deaths he lived through, the loss of both wives and two boys, the loss of both parents and all but one of his siblings, the loss of his close friends and neighbors, the aging that eventually stole his vigor.

But what he saw in his 96 years was love and opportunity, the opportunity to learn what what really mattered from his parents and siblings, to appreciate the gift of close friends and caring neighbors, to make money for and protect his family, the opportunity to serve the United States of America, to go to war and cheat death to help others in need, to share the love he felt for Pearl and Ruthie with six children, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Even as an old man, with no strength left, he kept helping those he loved.

I will never forget what you have done for me.

I will never forget what you taught us.

Thank you, Grandpa, for being there for my Grandma, and for helping my blind parents, for taking them to doctors and shopping and holding their hands while you needed someone to hold yours. Thank you for giving me the only inspiration I ever needed to work as hard as I do to provide for my family. I promise to teach my children how to grow a garden and chase those rabbits away.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Karen Steinfeld: Grandpa Stanley’s Brave Goodbye

Karen Steinfeld lives in Hillsdale, New Jersey with her husband Jeffrey and daughters Gabrielle, 18, and Serena, 14. She works as a financial aid clerk at Lincoln Technical Institute, a career training school. She also volunteers for the Sisterhood of Temple Emanuel of Woodcliff Lake and is a supporter of Girl Scouts. Grandpa Stanley passed away after fighting kidney cancer in April, 2011. He was a playful and loving father to his two daughters, a respected father-in-law, and a doting Grandpa to his four grandchildren. Last year Karen collected more than $1,600.00 towards the American Cancer Society’s regional “Relay for Life” efforts to help find a cure for cancer and give hope to others in the future.

Dear Gabrielle and Serena,

Strange as it may seem, I am grateful I was there at the moment Grandpa took his last breath. Strange it may seem because it was a moment neither planned nor sought out. In fact, I had dreaded it.

Because Grandpa was in his last days of life, his death was expected. Despite his brave fight, kidney cancer had overcome his body. He had reminded us day in and day out during his illness that this day would come. His warnings were never intended to alarm us but, rather, to prepare us for his death. And our whole family was indeed prepared. But however prepared you may be, it’s hard to know how you will react at the moment it happens.

Grandpa had accepted his fate like no one I have ever known. He was a writer and vividly expressed his thoughts about his dire illness on paper. At first, I thought the poems he wrote represented an odd reaction to his impending death, but I soon realized that it was natural for him. That’s how he communicated his feelings. That’s how he coped with his situation. And he did it well. One day his poems will help others cope with death.

Grandpa constantly preached that “one’s death is a part of life.” It’s something that no one really wants to face head-on. But he tried to help us accept this eventuality.

Why was I grateful to be there when he took his last breath? It meant an end to his suffering. He had gone through enough. It was time for him to go. And it happened right before my eyes, his peaceful letting go of life. Only because of the hospice nurse, who had closely monitored his condition all along, did I even realize it was happening. But I witnessed it nonetheless.

I’m grateful I was there for his last breath, too, because it ended our suffering as well. It enabled us to bid Grandpa a peaceful good-bye. It gave his brother (Uncle) Philip an opportunity to chant aloud at his bedside the Jewish prayer of Kaddish.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m thankful to Grandpa for his extraordinary efforts in preparing us all for his death. In facing terminal cancer, he was a brave patient. To the end he remained true to himself and his convictions, steadfast in his quest to be independent and self-sufficient. He was grateful to all who helped him in his final days. He was a heroic fighter, a role model. He also accepted his death as inevitable and, in so doing, made a difficult situation easier for us.

As it happened, Grandpa left behind a note for my sister (Aunt) Susan and me to read after his death. The note instructed us to go to his bookcase. There on a shelf we would find a particular book. We were to open the book to a certain page. Printed there was William Shakespeare’s sonnet #71.

In death, your Grandpa the poet sought nothing less than to console us with the power of great poetry.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Karen Steinfeld: Your Grandpa Stanley

Karen Steinfeld lives in Hillsdale, New Jersey with her husband Jeffrey and daughters Gabrielle, 18, and Serena, 14. She works as a financial aid clerk at Lincoln Technical Institute, a career training school. She also volunteers for the Sisterhood of Temple Emanuel of Woodcliff Lake and is a supporter of Girl Scouts. Grandpa Stanley passed away after fighting kidney cancer in April, 2011. He was a playful and loving father to his two daughters, a respected father-in-law, and a doting Grandpa to his four grandchildren. Last year Karen collected more than $1,600.00 towards the American Cancer Society’s regional “Relay for Life” efforts to help find a cure for cancer and give hope to others in the future.

Dear Gabrielle and Serena,

Strange as it may seem, I am grateful I was there at the moment Grandpa took his last breath. Strange it may seem because it was a moment neither planned nor sought out. In fact, I had dreaded it.

Because Grandpa was in his last days of life, his death was expected. Despite his brave fight, kidney cancer had overcome his body. He had reminded us day in and day out during his illness that this day would come. His warnings were never intended to alarm us but, rather, to prepare us for his death. And our whole family was indeed prepared. But however prepared you may be, it’s hard to know how you will react at the moment it happens.

Grandpa had accepted his fate like no one I have ever known. He was a writer and vividly expressed his thoughts about his dire illness on paper. At first, I thought the poems he wrote represented an odd reaction to his impending death, but I soon realized that it was natural for him. That’s how he communicated his feelings. That’s how he coped with his situation. And he did it well. One day his poems will help others cope with death.

Grandpa constantly preached that “one’s death is a part of life.” It’s something that no one really wants to face head-on. But he tried to help us accept this eventuality.

Why was I grateful to be there when he took his last breath? It meant an end to his suffering. He had gone through enough. It was time for him to go. And it happened right before my eyes, his peaceful letting go of life. Only because of the hospice nurse, who had closely monitored his condition all along, did I even realize it was happening. But I witnessed it nonetheless.

I’m grateful I was there for his last breath, too, because it ended our suffering as well. It enabled us to bid Grandpa a peaceful good-bye. It gave his brother (Uncle) Philip an opportunity to chant aloud at his bedside the Jewish prayer of Kaddish.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m thankful to Grandpa for his extraordinary efforts in preparing us all for his death. In facing terminal cancer, he was a brave patient. To the end he remained true to himself and his convictions, steadfast in his quest to be independent and self-sufficient. He was grateful to all who helped him in his final days. He was a heroic fighter, a role model. He also accepted his death as inevitable and, in so doing, made a difficult situation easier for us.

As it happened, Grandpa left behind a note for my sister (Aunt) Susan and me to read after his death. The note instructed us to go to his bookcase. There on a shelf we would find a particular book. We were to open the book to a certain page. Printed there was William Shakespeare’s sonnet #71.

In death, your Grandpa the poet sought nothing less than to console us with the power of great poetry.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Richard Haddad: Letter To My Baby Boy

Richard Haddad is recently retired from a career managing support services functions in the public and private sectors. A resident of Westminster, Maryland, he has been writing on the side – articles, essays, fiction and satire – since college. Because his wife Valorie’s first child, by a previous marriage, was brain-damaged during birth and suffered severe physical and mental disabilities as a result, the birth of her second child, Ashleigh, a healthy baby, was a very special event for the family. Richard and Valorie’s son Jonathan was born 18 months later, in December of 1986. To make sure he gave Jon his due, Richard wrote this letter to him the day after he was born, and gave it to him on his 18thbirthday.

Dear Jonathan Michael,
I hope you don’t ever feel cheated the way some people do because your birthday comes a couple of days after Christmas. I worried a little about that in the months before you were born, but now that you’re here, I feel that there probably isn’t a better time of the year for a birthday celebration. There’s so much good feeling in the air to begin with. Anyway, your mom and I will make sure you have lots of especially happy ones as you’re growing up
I want you to know that as happy and climactic a time as Christmas always is for me, and as really perfect as this past Christmas was, I had a very strong sense of it as a warm-up exercise: an opening act with colored lights and sentimental music and great food, the purpose of which was to get everyone in the right frame of mind for the main event – you.
So before you were even born, you changed (for the better) the way I experienced a particular Christmas, and I don’t doubt that your birth will have the effect of adding a special touch to all my future Christmases as well. Please keep that in mind when anyone asks you how it feels to have your birthday “overshadowed” by Christmas.
Yesterday, I watched a doctor lift your head from your mother’s body. I watched you take your first breath, heard your first cry, and after one of the nurses had cleaned you up a bit, I held you close and, through my surgical mask, gave you your first kiss.
The only way for you to understand how special those moments were for me would be to experience them yourself – being with a woman you love more than anything, watching the birth of a child you made with her, then cuddling your newborn. I hope it happens to you some day: maybe in my lifetime so we can talk about it; but for now, you’ll just have to take my word for it that the excitement of Christmas pales in comparison.
I promise you that as long as our family is together you are going to have as good a childhood as it’s possible for anyone to have. I can make that promise to you because of the amount and intensity of the love that exists among us. It’s a love which will warm you, and nurture you, and heal you when you need healing, help you overcome any problems, and teach you everything you need to know about how to be happy in life.
Like your sister Ashleigh before you, you exist, my Christmas baby, because of that love. There isn’t a force in life stronger than it. Together with your own unique characteristics, that love makes you a very special person, and gives you the power to make your life meaningful and the sense that you make a difference to life.
That’s our birth-day gift to you. Grow in it and give it to others in your own life. Always know that I love you and that I’m happy to be your father and that your being has made me a better person.

Thanksgiving Guest Columnist Richard Haddad: Letter To My Baby Girl

Richard Haddad is recently retired from a career managing support services functions in the public and private sectors. A resident of Westminster, Maryland, he has been writing on the side – articles, essays, fiction and satire – since college. His wife Valorie’s first child, by a previous marriage, was brain-damaged during birth and suffered severe physical and mental disabilities as a result. So there was apprehension during the pregnancy and delivery of her second child, their daughter Ashleigh. Richard, who had two children by a previous marriage, wanted Ashleigh to know how important her birth was for her parents and what she meant to the family. He wrote this letter to her after he got home from the hospital on the day she was born, in 1985. He never told her about the letter until her 18th birthday, when he gave her the signed original.

Dear Ashleigh Elizabeth,
I am about to take my first bite of one of the biggest, most delicious-looking ice cream sundaes I’ve ever had, topped with your mother’s own home-made fresh strawberry jam, in a private celebration of your birth at 10:11 AM today, June 24, 1985.
I wish you could have seen and appreciated the look on your mother’s face and the tears in her eyes when she watched you lifted out of her and saw that you were perfect and heard you cry. That look alone was for me worth all the hard work and all the risk that went into your being born today.
Before you were a minute old, the consensus in the delivery room was that you were a beautiful baby. It seems to me that if you were actually ugly and the hospital staff didn’t want to hurt our feelings, they would have said that you were cute, not beautiful. So you must really be beautiful. But that’s not how your daddy, who places a lot of value on accuracy, would describe you… yet.
What I see when I look at you is your matted dark brown hair on a still slightly crusty scalp; medium-to-dark complexion from my side of the family and a broad forehead from your mother’s side; your mother’s pug in miniature; puffy eyelids which open every once in a while to show enough to make me think I’m going to love your eyes; soft, soft skin (your mother’s) on big cheeks which sag a little; pretty shaped lips also like your mother’s, I think, except more like an o; a chin (what chin?) which needs to do some growing in and a neck which looks like it was intended for Jabba the Hut’s daughter; and pretty ears which seem to borrow in size and shape from both sides of the family, but which are covered, as your brother Jason observed, with tiny hairs.
I’d say you’re a mixed bag as a newborn looker, but I do think you’ve got a lot of potential. And I think that all the people who have been raving about you all day mean that you are beautiful compared to other newborns (who are usually pretty ugly) and that you are likely to grow to become a beautiful little girl and then a beautiful woman. I can agree with that.
So, beautiful one, now that your father has critiqued your face, please hear this clearly and carefully – the purpose of this letter: I love you already, as you are right this hour, not yet a full day old.
I love you and I love your mother who made you with me. I know that someday you will understand just how happy it made me and your mother to see your perfect body lifted from hers and to hear you pronounced a healthy baby. But please know this right from the beginning: you are because of the love that your mother and I have for each other, and for no other reason. I’m not sure how many other infants there are around who can say that, but I have a feeling you are a very lucky girl.
And with that said, I’m going to try to get some sleep; it’s been almost as long and emotional a day for me as it’s been for you. I hope you are sleeping restfully right now. Can’t wait to see your face again tomorrow morning.
P.S. – See part 2 tomorrow.

Guest columnist Richard Haddad: A Letter To My Baby Girl

Richard Haddad is recently retired from a career managing support services functions in the public and private sectors.  A resident of Westminster, Maryland, he has been writing on the side – articles, essays, fiction and satire – since college.

His wife Valorie’s first child, by a previous marriage, was brain-damaged during birth and suffered severe physical and mental disabilities as a result. So there was apprehension during the pregnancy and delivery of her second child, their daughter Ashleigh. Richard, who had two children by a previous marriage, wanted Ashleigh to know how important her birth was for her parents and what she meant to the family. He wrote this letter to her after he got home from the hospital on the day she was born, in 1985, and never told her about the letter until her 18^th birthday, when he gave her the signed original.

 

Dear Ashleigh Elizabeth,

     I am about to take my first bite of one of the biggest, most delicious-looking ice cream sundaes I’ve ever had, topped with your mother’s own home-made fresh strawberry jam, in a private celebration of your birth at 10:11 AM today, June 24, 1985.

     I wish you could have seen and appreciated the look on your mother’s face and the tears in her eyes when she watched you lifted out of her and saw that you were perfect and heard you cry. That look alone was for me worth all the hard work and all the risk that went into your being born today.

     Before you were a minute old, the consensus in the delivery room was that you were a beautiful baby. It seems to me that if you were actually ugly and the hospital staff didn’t want to hurt our feelings, they would have said that you were cute, not beautiful. So you must really be beautiful. But that’s not how your daddy, who places a lot of value on accuracy, would describe you… yet.

     What I see when I look at you is your matted dark brown hair on a still slightly crusty scalp; medium-to-dark complexion from my side of the family and a broad forehead from your mother’s side; your mother’s pug in miniature; puffy eyelids which open every once in a while to show enough to make me think I’m going to love your eyes; soft, soft skin (your mother’s) on big cheeks which sag a little; pretty shaped lips also like your mother’s, I think, except more like an o; a chin (what chin?) which needs to do some growing in and a neck which looks like it was intended for Jabba the Hut’s daughter; and pretty ears which seem to borrow in size and shape from both sides of the family, but which are covered, as your brother Jason observed, with tiny hairs.

     I’d say you’re a mixed bag as a newborn looker, but I do think you’ve got a lot of potential. And I think that all the people who have been raving about you all day mean that you are beautiful compared to other newborns (who are usually pretty ugly) and that you are likely to grow to become a beautiful little girl and then a beautiful woman. I can agree with that.

     So, beautiful one, now that your father has critiqued your face, please hear this clearly and carefully – the purpose of this letter: I love you already, as you are right this hour, not yet a full day old.

     I love you and I love your mother who made you with me. I know that someday you will understand just how happy it made me and your mother to see your perfect body lifted from hers and to hear you pronounced a healthy baby. But please know this right from the beginning: you are because of the love that your mother and I have for each other, and for no other reason. I’m not sure how many other infants there are around who can say that, but I have a feeling you are a very lucky girl.

     And with that said, I’m going to try to get some sleep; it’s been almost as long and emotional a day for me as it’s been for you. I hope you are sleeping restfully right now. Can’t wait to see your face again tomorrow morning.

P.S. – See part 2 tomorrow.

Fair Lawn Remembered: GPS of Memory Points Homeward: Part 3

Dear Michael and Caroline,

The Nabisco factory over on Route 208, where, on certain days, if the wind blew just right, you could smell the Oreos and other cookies being made.

The Town Hall with the police department where your father once took you because some yahoos driving by your house in a pickup truck as you shot hoops in the driveway saw fit to fire a slingshot with paper clips at you, leaving an imprint on your bicep.

The hill back behind the houses where on snowy winter days you took your Flexible Flyer and went sleigh-riding.

The stickball field, the basketball courts, the running track at the high school.

The houses where all the kids you knew lived, pals, girlfriends, one-night stands like Hannah Butensky, a rabbi’s daughter who kissed you so memorably, with such religious fervor, as you made out on that drunken New Year’s Eve.

The spot outside the junior high school where the Italian students, the so-called hoods or boppers, hung out, smoking cigarettes, leather jacket collars turned up, the object of your naïve envy.

The hill near the railroad tracks and the ambulance corps headquarters where you tried your first cigarette, coughing the whole time, unable to inhale with any degree of success.
You lived there, in that town, in that house, for 20 years (you actually spent two of those at college in Boston). You lived there at a time, a formative time, when everything that happened truly registered, left an impression, felt so very freighted with meaning and import. Everything mattered, every last detail. Everything seemed momentous, everything left a mark.

That town represented practically your whole world, that’s how you saw it then.

You went to school there.

You delivered newspapers there.

You went around shoveling snow for neighbors there.

You pretty much stayed put, except for the occasional foray to visit relatives in Manhattan or Long Island or East and West Orange.

You had the firehouse right across the street and your elementary school only a block away and the stores in town within a 10-minute walk.

Every house was a state unto itself, every block a nation, every neighborhood a continent.

But all that changed.

Now you go back to your hometown and, across all the decades, more than 30 years now, it’s all so different.

Everything that once seemed so far from everything else – the walk from your house into town – now seems to near.

Everything that felt so large – the Plaza Building, Memorial Pool, Fair Lawn High School – now feels so much smaller.

You recognize how skewed was your sense of size and proximity. You had no context then. All you understood was what lay right outside your door. Now you have context coming out of your ears.

That’s how you saw Fair Lawn then, as the universe itself, and this is how you see it now, as a small, simple town. Never in a million years would you have picked anywhere else to grow up.

Fair Lawn Remembered: GPS of Memory Points Homeward: Part 2

Dear Michael and Caroline,

Over here lay Radburn, the section you knew best. It was closest, with its tall trees fit for climbing and its amphitheater for summer productions and the sloping hill where, at 20 or so, you lay on the grass on a blustery November night, half drunk on Chivas Regal or Johnny Walker Black, just admiring the dynamics of the El Greco night sky. Here, too, you climbed those tall trees, clambering as far as your prowess and daring would take you, branch by precarious branch, higher and higher, until finally you ran out of either branches or nerve.

Over there is High Street, leading you to what you called town, where you could get a comic book and a drink with cherry or lemon or lime in a conical paper cup at the soda fountain. You went up High Street in Fall, under the tall trees with a canopy of leaves, and you would hear little cracking, popping sounds all around: the acorns dropping off the trees, a few beaning you.

Town meant only one place: Gorlen’s, where you stuck your gum under the soda fountain counter and read Superman or Archie and Jughead back behind the magazine rack until the owner came along after an hour or so to kick you out.

High Street featured structures you saw as almost strange in Fair Lawn: apartment buildings. Most of the residents of the town lived in single-family homes with two or three or maybe four bedrooms – none, come to think of it, really much bigger or smaller than any other. Apartments, with common entrances and shared driveways and surrounding grounds, seemed to you then such an alien concept. Almost everyone you knew lived in a house, and so anyone who lived in an apartment struck you as somehow down on his luck and deserving of sympathy.

It’s all mapped out in your head, your hometown, preserved in amber, its DNA now your DNA.

P.S. – See part 3 tomorrow.

Fair Lawn Remembered: GPS Of Memory Points Homeward

Dear Michael and Caroline,

Back again to Fair Lawn, my hometown, we now go. We’re at Memorial Pool, where we spent our early summers, kids on a makeshift municipal beach. You could smell the yeast wafting over the Passaic River from the brewery in Paterson, and from the concession stand came the appetizing fragrance of greasy French Fries.

In the summer of 1967, everyone listened to the Doors doing “Light My Fire,” and it played loud over the radio during a basketball game there one day. You played hoops one afternoon for three hours even though it had to be 90 degrees out and wound up puking your guts out.

All your friends and classmates went to Memorial Pool. You would lay around watching the girls, seeing, too, which guy now had hair on his chest. On July 4th, you went there at night for the fireworks, the whole town flocking there with blankets and beach chairs and coolers to watch the sky explode with brilliant color.

You would go, early on, with your parents, and as the fireworks boomed across the pool, thundering through the air, you would pretend to be a soldier during a bombing, each blast dropping you suddenly to the sand, hand clutched to your heart.

Ah, those warm, wet, languid days without end, no real care except maybe whether you would be brave enough to go off the high dive or some girl you liked would catch your eye.

If you live in your hometown long enough, you get to know just about every square inch of it, and so it went in Fair Lawn.

P.S. – See part 2 tomorrow.

Jewish Boy Plays Hooky

Dear Michael and Caroline,

A 12-year-old boy, short, skinny, frizzy hair, is slapping a spaldeen against a brick wall at the Fair Lawn Jewish Center, playing hooky from Hebrew school. It’s me, of course.

I’d gone to Hebrew school for maybe two years by then, and had at least another year to go until my bar mitzvah. I’d never wanted to attend, but my parents had insisted, mostly my father, saying I should learn about Jewish history, understand my identity, my cultural heritage.

I found the classes boring, all that stuff about Abraham being ready to kill his son and Moses being found in the reeds of the Nile. On and on the teachers droned, teaching us the Hebrew alphabet and the pronunciation of words and the meaning of Purim and asking us to study and come back the next time ready to recite a passage.

All in all, I preferred to play handball against a brick wall, much as I was doing now, daring the authorities with this bold act of hooky.

My father had talked to me a little over the years about being Jewish, about enterprising Jewish businessmen and about anti-Semitism, and I could tell he took no small pride in being Jewish. My mother never really talked about it at all.

We certainly never discussed Jewish affairs as a family, nothing about Israel or the Bible or the prophets, nothing about the Holocaust or Jewish destiny. So I must have sensed some disconnect between my obligation to go to Hebrew school and how our immediate family lived its life, its decidedly secular, only marginally Jewish life.

The principal of the Hebrew school came outside that day and caught me red-handed – why I had opted to play hooky right there on the premises I’ll never grasp – and brought me inside for a gentle talking-to. I never played hooky again, chastened by my capture, and went on to get my bar mitzvah, never to return to Hebrew school again.

I’ve never stopped feeling Jewish, though, and caring about being Jewish, even though I no longer go to Sabbath services or observe the Jewish holidays. Hebrew remains an ancient tongue I have no urge to master. And God is still a rumor I have yet to verify. In a sense, it’s as if even today I’m still somehow playing hooky.