By JoEllen Collins
I wasn’t with my cherished children and grandchildren this sad year for the family Thanksgiving we used to enjoy. I spent a quiet day instead and found it to be, if not the usual happy, raucous family gathering, nonetheless rewarding and leaving me full in many ways in spite of the pandemic.
Instead of cooking in the morning or helping my hosts, I spent the time catching up on some of the smaller tasks I had been neglecting, like emailing friends and family, sifting through a pile of half-read magazines, planning for the upcoming Hanukkah and Christmas season, and cuddling with my dogs while I started a new book. Not bad for a people person. Later, I took delicious pre-cooked restaurant dinners to share with a dear woman friend. (So lucky my daughter and son-in-law own a restaurant!)
Later in the morning, after talking and FaceTiming with family, I remembered one of the rituals of this holiday that I will most miss: during the feast, each guest states one good reason to be thankful. In my mind, I reviewed my huge gratitude list and thought about which one of the items I would choose if I were with my affectionate family.
While thinking of the difference this year has been and how it will affect our future celebrations, a new concept emerged. I am thankful that I have never, ever been without the prospect of having enough food to eat. I have never known the severe hunger that millions of people in the world suffer each day.
On Wednesday, I watched a moving video on Facebook. To an audience of elderly Holocaust survivors, a woman in her 80s (I didn’t note her name but will refer to her as Naomi) related a true story of her time with her mother at Bergen-Belsen in 1944. They still possessed a tiny bit of chocolate they had carefully hidden since being rounded up. A young woman in the same tier of stacked bed sites was about to give birth, having kept her pregnancy as unnoticed as possible, concealing the event she understood would result in her being sent to the gas chamber, along with her unborn baby. Then, when she started to give birth in the quarters, Naomi’s mother suggested they give the woman their chocolate to help her through the pain. The baby and mother survived the ordeal of hidden lives until the liberation of the camps a few months later. After Naomi’s speech, a middle-aged woman in the audience came up and introduced herself as the baby born that day.
The image brought tears to my eyes, as does a photo of a malnourished child anywhere in the world. Thank God I haven’t experienced this kind of deprivation and was able to bring up healthy babies in a free society. Of course, I am thankful for that and hope we remember not to overeat, metaphorically, all the wonderful nourishment we have but try again and again to share our bounty with those who are hungry.
