My family wasn’t that big on Thanksgiving when I was growing up. We used to go to a family meal when I was really young, we quickly became religious and thus strictly kosher, yadda yadda yadda, it never really took within the nuclear fam.
I don’t know if it was the sitcoms, the nostalgia for a national experience I didn’t really have, or the fact that in November 2005 I was dating and surrounded by mostly non-Americans who were curious and I was ready to oblige. But I’ve been doing a Thanksgiving (shabbat) dinner for the last twenty years – in Israel.
Life milestones are funny – well, mainly serious and emotional and intense – but so many are funny, we don’t even know to look out for them or count them, most are actually weird and quirky and common and unexpected, cuddling up behind you and putting their hands on your eyes and saying, Guess who? and then you turn around, surprised to see this time it’s not on par with wedding or birth or first steps or bat mitzvah or drivers license…
It’s the first “can I have money, my friends are all going to get ice cream after school” or “can you print these photos of me and my girlfriend for something I’m doing” or realizing you haven’t done the proper ‘changing bodies’ talk with your second daughter but she says she’s had a pad in her bag this whole time just in case, or the first time you ask your oldest daughter how the ‘risky behavior’ assembly at high school was, or the first time one of your kids borrows a pair of shoes from you, or the first time your teenage son makes you laugh so hard you cry and rejoice over a shared sense of humor, or the first time you look down at your youngest and realize she’s only a couple years away from being taller than you, or the first time one of your kids tucks you into bed because it’s 10pm and she’ll be up for another two hours at least…
Or, last year, after a year of war, overload and exhaustion, not wanting to do anything about anything, and your kids collectively decide “it’s ok you’re tired, we want to do Thanksgiving anyway, you deal with the turkey and we’ll do the sides after years of watching you do it.”
It’s funny that I’ve worked in the investment world for over a decade and yet outside of my 40-hour weeks of venture capital, I take for granted how much I’ve put in over these past decades in building a life. And the returns are never guaranteed, but when you feel them play out it’s a feeling way beyond thanks.
Whadya got: