Thanks for what? Plenty

On a recent Sunday afternoon we headed to Troy Hill’s Scratch & Co., hoping to catch the last half hour of the live jazz that gives the restaurant’s excellent brunch a mellow energy.

A friend, Tom Wendt, was playing drums in a trio that day, and when the gig ended he came over to chat. We remarked on the room’s pleasant buzz. My husband, a jazz vibraphonist, asked Tom whether things seemed different to him now — sorta-maybe-post-pandemic.

“They really do,” Tom said. “People just seem so happy to be together, to be out.”

That was the feel in the room. It’s something we’ve been experiencing in other gathering places — especially those with live music, whether restaurant or church.

This time last year I was wrestling with an angry grief and wondering how, in such a catastrophic time, any of us would find much cause to give thanks. This year feels different. It feels better — not “normal,” but definitely better.

In recently rereading Thanksgiving’s history, it was sobering — humbling, too — to realize once again that this cycle of pain and plenty, of loss and abundance, has been our reality from the beginning.

This year is the 400th anniversary of America’s “First Thanksgiving.” The Pilgrims arrived here in November 1620, and by March 1621, half of them had died, likely of smallpox. Those who survived owed much to the Wampanoag tribe for gifts of food.

The Wampanoag had also been ravaged by an unknown disease, and they were grateful to have the armed but peaceful English as allies against a healthier, hostile native tribe.

The surviving Pilgrims planted crops, and when they gathered in that first harvest in the autumn of 1621, they invited the Wampanoags to share the feast.

There were twice as many Native Americans as there were English newcomers.

Gratitude in the midst of traumatic loss strikes a chord, doesn’t it?

Here I am, 400 years later, in a cozy room with people I love, enjoying a croque madame and shaved zucchini with goat cheese and pine nuts, listening to a cool take on “Never Can Say Goodbye.”

It’s a long way from Plymouth Rock, isn’t it, but what hasn’t changed is that it can all disappear so fast. That’s what really scared us last year and continues to give an uneasy edge to our recovery: the sudden, widespread realization of how tenuous life is.

That awareness gives restaurant gatherings and worship services extra significance. It infuses even our everyday chores. We buy groceries, pump gas and purchase Christmas gifts, aware that broken links in the supply chain, worrisome inflation and surging coronavirus cases could upend life again.

Like the Pilgrims and Wampanoags, then, and every generation since, how do we summon gratitude — and therefore hope — amidst uncertainty?

Well, we “count our blessings,” as the old hymn instructs — naming every single thing, no matter how small or routine.

Here’s one blessing that’s neither small nor routine: the COVID-19 vaccine. In many areas of the country the pandemic has ebbed or stabilized, and the primary reason for this progress is the vaccine. We should definitely give thanks for modern science.

Even those who can’t or don’t get vaccinated can be grateful for this astonishingly fast medical breakthrough and for people who are able or willing to get it.

We can give thanks for surviving, even as we continue to mourn those we’ve lost.

We give thanks for the love and companionship of those still around us — and that we get to be together again in one space.

I think we’re already feeling this one, if not articulating it. That’s the extra buzz, the celebratory air, that we keep sensing whenever we venture out.

This time last year I was holed up, working through grief and struggling to understand, to really get, that the God I believe in could somehow share my sadness.

I titled that column, “Thanks for what?” Now I know — at least a little better than I did way back then, for which I’m grateful.