My mother-in-law was having her Thanksgiving Breakdown. "I hate this holiday," Bev complained, keening back and forth in the kitchen chair.
"What's wrong?" I asked, knowing the answer already. Bev has had a tough year. Her husband's illness is getting worse. Her grandson just had a kid out of wedlock. She has pain in her legs, the economy stinks, and Barack Obama is still in the White House.
"The world is going to hell," she told me. "How's anybody supposed to be thankful?"
"We're here," I said. "I mean, we're alive."
"So what?"
"Beats the alternative."
"Oh, shut up."
This is how Bev talks to people she loves. Life is not turning out as she planned. My in-laws had worked their way out of dirt-poor beginnings to build a cushy, middle-class life. Bev had cooked a thousand dinners, scrubbed decades of floors, washed tons of laundry, ironed her family's sheets, towels, and underpants (seriously) in an effort to be the perfect American Mom, and looked forward to the late autumn of her life, when she hoped to reap the rewards of sacrifice beside a healthy husband, a pension check, and a Winnebago bound for Maine. Like millions of other Americans, Bev believed that if she could do better than her own parents, give her kids more opportunities than she'd had herself, she would die a contented woman. Thanksgiving would come and she would be happy. God and her country would keep their promise. But this perfect payoff was not in the cards.
I thought of the millions of other families struggling to give thanks in hard times. How many others were dreading this feast day in the midst of a recession, for the same reason that it's worse being depressed while on vacation in a sunny place than at home where it's raining? Or living through Valentine's Day after a breakup? Or going to Mardi gras when you're on the wagon? Forced festivity is a hateful thing. It makes you feel exponentially worse.
So, how is it possible to be grateful for life even when it's so imperfect? Not grateful in a rationalizing ("it could be worse") way, smiling through the pain, or forcing a false posture of gratitude because that's the right thing to do. But actually feeling grateful for our twisted, messy, imperfect lives in all their downward mobility? Grateful to be here, full stop; thankful for the people we do have, however damaged they might be, because we are sharing this life together and their love, the precious brevity of it, is what makes life worthwhile. To be grateful in such moments because we can be, thanks to these courageous hearts of ours, with their power to care and to keep moving forward when things aren't working. To truly feel—for a single day—that things as they are are quite enough—more than enough. That our lives, just as they are, are plenty.
Back in the kitchen, Bev was baking. I watched her leaning on the sink, kneading dough for her Sour Cream Softies, the cookies she makes every year, the ones that people know her for. She looks over her shoulder to where I'm watching; she sees in my eyes that I know she's feeling better, breaking the eggs, stirring the batter. She smiles at me and shakes her head before I can say a ruinous word. It's not the greatest day in the world, both of us are aware of that. But it is the only one we have.
