America can celebrate its Thanksgiving at last

For many Americans, Thanksgiving is the most cherished national holiday, even more than Christmas.

Of course, the pandemic has scrambled everything this year. On this rock-bound island 13 miles off the mid-coast of Maine, where there is no longer a resident sheriff and street signs routinely disappear, islanders have responded sensibly.

They wear masks on Main Street, limit numbers in shops and practise physical distancing on the ferry. Some skeptics object — “A masquerade!” a tradesman grumbles — but in a country where distrust and defiance have fuelled the virus, not so here.

It is among the many things to appreciate this American Thanksgiving. This occasion is about giving thanks, but it is about taking stock too. Amid the anxiety, reflection is relief and gratitude is grace.

On this island, I'm thankful for the generosity of friends and the empathy of strangers. In August, when my wife fell down the back stairs and broke bones, they helped speed her passage to the mainland; boosted our car battery, which conveniently died as we pulled into port; treated her warmly in hospital; and arranged quickly for her surgery.

The doctor was superb, as were the nurses, who called often afterward. Beyond them, there were acts of personal kindness: Pam, accompanied by husband Ed, gamely recovering from a stroke, bringing over a meal of roast chicken and potato salad; Cay, helping in the garden; Dan and Suzanne, offering to get us to Canada, if necessary, by any means necessary.

I am thankful for Randy, the quarryman, who cuts granite like an artist, and Addison, the woodsman, who knows trees as orthopedists know nerves.

I am thankful for Casey and Lennay, the ladies of Goose Rocks Lighthouse, which commands the Fox Islands Thoroughfare, their iron redoubt filled with laughter, lobster and liquor. And to Jim and Merry, for a windblown, sun-splashed adventure on Penobscot Bay on a September Sunday, plying their boat through drenching, four-foot swells.

I am thankful for the sweet music of Pam and Jim, the hospitality of Joel and Julie, the eclecticism of Jeff and Gail, and al fresco dining with Carey and Giovanni. I am thankful for Chris, our brave octogenarian pal, laughing uproariously as we liberated a red squirrel squatting in his kitchen for five days.

I am thankful for a seaside summer of the ages, uncommonly hot and dry, spent in communal isolation. I am thankful for the worn forest paths and sculpted swimming quarries. I am thankful for the lowering skies, the creases of Lane's Island and the vistas from Starboard Rock.

I am thankful for the eagle perched in a white pine outside my window, for the waves that lash the stone beach, for the flowering of the Matinicus Red dahlias. I am not thankful for the deer eating them.

I am thankful, particularly, for a country — not mine, I know — that has reversed its descent into authoritarianism. It is painful watching a proud people ravaged by disease and economic privation, embracing falsehood, conspiracy and prejudice, evoking the moral blindness that sustained a culture of slavery and segregation.

I am thankful — always — for a country that fed Europe after the Great War, reversed the course of the Second World War and rebuilt the continent afterward. That established the United Nations and the institutional architecture of the postwar world. That went to the moon, created electricity and the internet, gave us jazz and rock 'n' roll, and an army of Nobel laureates.

In the hollow of the night of Trump's America, I never stopped believing in Lincoln's, Roosevelt's and Kennedy's America. I was confident that the people would choose wisely in 2020.

I am thankful — oh, so thankful — that the resistance won, the Blue Wall stood and the system held, thanks to the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the media and public opinion.

Flawed and faltering, the republic endures this Thanksgiving. On Vinalhaven, we cheer the fog lifting and the horizon clearing, as an ailing soul welcomes the morning. Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.