On this Thanksgiving Day, we seem to love more deeply, to cherish more profoundly

We cannot go to our favorite restaurants, but the two of us sit together every night and share our meal in our home.

We cannot visit with family or friends and hug them, but we can see them and talk to them through Zoom, looking at their loving faces.

We can’t go to the grocery store, but we have grocery delivery down to an art form.

We do not have the pages of our calendars filled in, but we sleep as long as we wish and stay up late into the wee hours of the night enjoying whatever we feel like doing or watching during our nightly pajama party.

We cannot honor those we have lost by attending their funerals in person, but we are there on Zoom or by other virtual means to grieve, honor and love into eternity and support family and friends.

We have built a new routine of life while longing for the days of normal activities.

We have paused to appreciate one another in new ways, profound ways, ways of incredible gratitude.

We are beyond grateful to our doctors and nurses, to the entire medical community, to our delivery companies, to our police and firefighters, to our city workers, to our grocery workers, to our mail carriers and staff, to all who keep us supplied and safe, to all Americans who wear masks, to those who are creating the vaccines.

We are pained for those who are spending their last elderly years in a pandemic and we consistently reach out to them to raise their spirits and to let them know they are not alone.

We seem to love more deeply, cherish more profoundly, see more clearly, and hope more intensely.

And we welcome back America with the pride we once knew and the hope we now have.

Elynne Chaplik- Aleskow, Lake View

Send letters to letters@ suntimes. com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be 350 words or less.