Why Rituals Are a Good Thing

Everywhere I go people are still discussing Thanksgiving celebrations. Their turkey was a big hit. They cooked more or less food than they needed. Thumbs up or down on ‘Thrifty Thursday’—the commercial prequel to ‘Black Friday.’ A new pumpkin pie recipe got rave reviews.  Hosts of adult children and all their offspring are groaning as they clean up behind by their visitors. One friend is still looking for her husband’s I Phone.  It was last seen in the same room as her 18 month old grandson. Unfortunately, no amusing You Tube video offers consolation. Another friend thinks that her kitchen may be in good working order by Christmas—just in time for the next onslaught. I’m sure there were family get-togethers  that left folks less inclined to get together with family but I haven’t heard of any—just people enormously grateful for the chance to be with loved ones even with all the chaos and inconvenience that comes with long holiday weekend visits.

Sitting with my friend Karen over a cup of tea, she described her let down over the superb meal she and her family had shared. It surprised her. Preparing it together had been such a great bonding experience!Two days of planning and effort had gone into its execution. Her daughter-in-law-to-be wanted to do her family’s traditional shared gratitude reflections. But Karen didn’t think that would go down so well in a family adverse to public confessionals.  Instead the group sat down at the table, thanked the chefs and demolished the fruits of their collective labor in about 20 minutes flat.  The experience left both women feeling empty. Didn’t hearts and minds need to be fed in addition to tummies and taste buds? Wasn’t there a way to make this day different and more memorable than others? Wasn’t Thanksgiving supposed to mean something special?  I agreed with Karen. It’s discouraging to work so hard on a meal and see it devoured in minutes with no acknowledgement of the unique purpose of the day.  Just as we put time into planning for our food, we need to plan for our meaning. Purpose doesn’t magically materialize at our table any more than the food on our plates. If we leave that part of our celebration to happenstance it likely won’t happen.

At our table, we are accustomed now to the idea that Thanksgiving isn’t really about the meal.  Good food matters but the meal is the symbol of what we have come to celebrate. We have passed through another year safely. We are saving up for another year, storing away memories of our time together. This is when everyone who is able makes a special effort to be there. We stop before we eat to talk about what is special about being Americans. We have ritualized the practice because we don’t trust ourselves to make it happen otherwise.   Sure, we would have a bigger, better meal than usual (and everyone agreed that it was the best yet) but when it was over we’d have nothing more than fuller bellies. A ritual gives structure to our coming together and reminds us to stop and pay attention to this day and time together. As a result, we have years of a compelling tradition that has grown over time and that we associate with the holiday of Thanksgiving. This along with good food is what fills us with gratitude.

We aren’t slaves to a fixed ritual because that would bore everyone, instill thoughtlessness and incite rebellion.  This year we adapted our practice and used “A Memory Harvest” to tell stories about people whom we love who are no longer with us. Children and grandchildren heard about 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd generation Americans who lived life in different ways and taught us lasting life lessons: “Adapt.” “Be kind.”  “Take risks.” “Work hard.” “Be interesting.” “Have family dinners.” “No matter how busy you are there’s always time for play.”

I listened to Karen and Karen listened to me. “I think we’ll try your way next year. I hated getting up from the table and feeling like this was just another meal. We hadn’t created enough to remember.” National holidays are too special to let them pass without passing on the stories of your family and our nation. When you begin to experience the magical connections that appear when you connect the two, the holidays transcend food. They become about all the ways you and your loved ones can celebrate US.

Finding Gratitude in Gratitude Plates

This past week we worked with our partner Art with a Heart in Lakeland Elementary and Middle School, Monteverde Senior Center and Restoration Gardens,  an interim housing site for young homeless adults.  Using the project first developed with CMOM, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM), we helped citizens from 7 to 70+ create  Gratitude Plates  that expressed what they’re thankful for as they approach Thanksgiving.

We hoped that participants would find the activity engaging.  We brought plenty of supplies and gave schoolchildren paper and plastic plates and our adult artists glass plates to decorate.  After introducing the exercise with a short discussion about the meaning of Thanksgiving and our country’s early experience with physical and political survival, participants drew, and pasted, glued and painted, and thoughtfully composed their amazing gratitude creations.

What surprised me was how absorbing the activity was for everyone regardless of age or setting.  A good art activity should be as appealing as a pool on a hot day.  Participants plunged right in.The noise level rose in every space as participants laughed, talked about what they were doing and cheerfully shared supplies and ideas. “You should put the dolphin here.”  “Look! I found a great turkey for you!”  “ How about this color green?” “You know I’m a pink girl!” The concept seemed to hit people where their hearts are and gave them a chance to connect the holiday with a symbolic object that made sense to them: it represented how (we eat) and why (we’re grateful for what we have) we celebrate Thanksgiving .

My assistant Tanya and I also took the project on Friday morning to Baltimore’s Kipp Ujima Village Academy where 100 5^th graders made plates after doing their own version of the Freedom’s Feast Thanksgiving ceremony. There we had the same experience I had at the other sites. An hour just wasn’t enough. Once our artists got involved and committed to the idea it was hard for them to stop. They laid out designs and began to search for the colors, words and embellishments that would best represent their theme. Family was popular at Kipp with family pictures enhanced in thoughtful ways while others were grateful for music, food, friends, teachers, their school, the dream of a career. “I am thankful for a roof over my head” was accompanied by a picture of a nice house with a prominent roof. Another was grateful for “A mother’s power.” 

At Restoration Gardens, Mone̕, a 19 year old resident created a stunning plate and wrote: “I am most thankful for living in the ghettos of Baltimore city because it carried me to struggles and without those struggles I wouldn’t be as strong as I am.” On the front of her plate she added a book. The book, she explained, will tell her story in images and symbols.

 I am about to launch into my three day annual frenzy of Thanksgiving preparations. I have shopping lists that get re-edited, boxes of table decorations and seating plans that go back ten years. Almost everyone  knows their food assignments. It will still be frenetic but everything will get done for our crowd of 25. On Thursday we will sit down to a beautiful meal and a meaningful experience as we do our version of the Try A Slice ceremony and inside of that tuck the Memory Harvest with 7 stories about family members who are no longer with us.  Gratitude Plates will sit on our table and trigger more stories. This is our nation’s story. These are our stories. When else will we tell them? What I am grateful for going into these few days is that we can do this. But I am also grateful for the lessons these talented artists taught me this past week. The children at Kipp and Lakeland, the young adults at Restoration Gardens and the seniors at Monteverde reminded me that it is such a blessing to be able to create, to have a family, to have a roof over our heads, a good school, teachers we love, trials that test and strengthen us, friends we trust and special moments when we can stop and celebrate US. Enjoy your Thanksgiving wherever you are!

Celebrating With Stories This Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away.  And I’m not ready.  It’s not about the meal. Most of us spent a lot of energy and time getting that part right. In our family, we’ve been sharing the feast responsibility for years now. Two to three weeks in advance, I send out the request for volunteers to bring sides, entrees, and dessert. Thanks to my niece, Buffy, we’re using www.perfectpotluck.com, to help us coordinate this year’s collective effort. It’s a big improvement from our traditional group email message and annoying “please remember to include all when you hit send” reminder. Rich’s fried turkey has become our standard, along with Phyllis’ cranberry relish and Kristin’s wild cherry and fennel stuffing and mashed potatoes with garlic. We have a few serious contenders for favorite dessert. The meal is important—so few of us are farmers anymore and we’re celebrating a harvest holiday that’s been around for thousands of years.

That’s the basic message of Thanksgiving: we look back as we’ve survived the past year. We’re filled with gratitude. Then we look forward: we hope to have enough of what we need to survive the coming year. The big meal we love represents our harvest. And we become very attached to our Thanksgiving recipes. The reason makes sense. We come to the table to celebrate that we’ve made it safely through another year. Familiar dishes tell us that we’ve reached our destination. While we’ve changed, the food stays the same.  Like a final lap marker, the smell of our family’s favorite recipe tells us that we crossed the finish line!

But here’s what’s always bothered me. We take hours to prepare the meal, then sit down and devour it like locusts and thirty minutes later people are finished and ready to go watch the football game. As important as the meal is we sometimes forget that food gets eaten, while the memory of our time together is what truly sustains us.  We should feed people’s bodies and their souls. This takes some planning, especially as busy families have less dinnertime conversation experience and guests living in different communities have fewer shared regular interactions. Part of that soul feeding can take the form of a ceremony.

We’ve been doing some version of a Freedom’s Feast ceremony for the past 10 years in our family. We now use the “Try a Slice” variation at our table and adapt it differently each year to make it fresh. As we mark our first decade of Freedom’s Feast inspired holiday celebration, what I can comfortably say is that Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without Freedom’s Feast. Our children have grown up with it. They expect our Thanksgiving to include a really interesting table conversation about what it means to be Americans and why we are thankful for that privilege. Our family represents the range of the political spectrum so we get different ideas and perspectives. The ceremony is the frame. It’s the signal that tells us this is important, a unique day with a special purpose. It says, “Listen up, folks!” And we do.

Time’s running out because I want story-tellers this year. People we love have passed on and we haven’t done a good job of passing on their stories. Their stories are our inheritance, just as America is. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have some of the people who made us who we are at our table?  We’ll use “A Memory Harvest,” a one page ceremony to gather brief stories of those who are no longer with us at our Thanksgiving table. Instead of going around the table and asking everyone to say what they’re thankful for this year, we will use “A Memory Harvest” instead. I’ll ask guests to write what they’re thankful for on little parchment sheets and we’ll post them on a board book for guests to read by the buffet table.

I sent out an email on Saturday night inviting 7 guests to tell a three minute story about a parent, grandparent, or other loved one this Thanksgiving. I sent them the Tips for Storytellers. No one has responded yet. That’s the running out of time part. Everyone is so busy. So I will have to follow up and help a few who may not understand the request. I also have a story I want to tell. I’ve got to find the picture I have in mind, or a toy helicopter. We need to set tables for 23 and figure out the seating. If we leave it to chance, some guests might be ignored, others will just sit with the people they know best, and we miss the opportunity to learn more about people in our own family.

A holiday is what you make it. It can come and go in a flurry of frantic activity. The logistics will always be there. But, if you are willing to take a little more time and think about what you want your family and guests to take away from the table other than full bellies, then help to create the experience you would like them to have. The holiday only comes once a year, but the memories you make together can last forever. I can’t wait to hear the stories people bring this Thanksgiving as we share our harvest meal and celebrate US.

The Q Team Comes to Dinner

"Dr Q” and his team came for dinner at our home this past Friday night. “Q” is short for Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa which is a mouthful. Dr Q, the neurosurgeon who directs the Brain Tumor Surgery program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Center and the Pituitary Surgery Program at the hospital, is a charismatic personality. Even our neurotic border collie, Jake, was charmed by him. It was easy to see why he attracts people of all kinds. He touches people constantly, grips your arm, pats your back, and dispenses hugs without hesitation. Our 14 year old schipperke instantly threw herself at his feet knowing she would get the attention she craves.  He embodies the American dream, having risen from illegal immigrant to star medical practitioner in the most exacting of all medical sciences. Alfredo neither forgets his humble origins nor the fact that many people contributed to his success. He has a grueling work ethic but hasn’t lost his sense of humor. He laughs readily and often—mostly at his own expense. We laughed about the Mexican hairless dog his family adopted through a dog rescue service because his kids didn’t want him to forget his “peeps.” Unfortunately the dog couldn’t forget the climate for which he was bred and refused to go outside during our Baltimore winters. Rescue went out the window and the dog, so ugly he was almost cute, went back to Arizona.

Over the days leading up to the dinner, the invitation list kept growing.  I was struck by his team’s global character. Dr. Q apologized as he added two more guests the day before. I apologized in return. We could only seat sixteen at the same table, but I wondered if he could dig up another nation or two for our mini UN forum? We had Argentina, Mexico, China, Belgium and a roster of names so challenging I would never make it through the evening without a cheat sheet.  Emily, the event coordinator, sent the attendee CV’s and Rich, my partner, and I marveled at the array of talent. We decided that it would be prudent to speak little and listen a lot. Despite demanding operating schedules and lab experiments, everyone arrived on time and we enjoyed four hours together over a Shabbat meal.  We don’t go “out” on Friday nights, so we couldn’t accept the invitation to join their Friday night end of the week ritual when they gather for a meal at the lab. They share important findings and often invite a guest patient to their dinner to keep their work, as Dr. Q. and I discussed, “down to earth and honest.”

When your goal is curing brain cancer, it’s easy to get lost in the clouds. A patient living with ‘the monster’ can quickly bring you back to the ground. On the other hand, so can the memory of a loved one who died of the disease. We were deeply moved to hear how often personal experiences with brain trauma and disease had touched the lives of team members. I won’t pretend to remember or even fully understand all the work that these brilliant young researchers were doing. You can go on Dr Q’s website http://www.doctorqmd.com/ to read all about it. My big takeaway was this: in an era when so many of us have become addicted to the gratification of instant answers and quick results, these young people—equally divided between men and women— have deliberately committed themselves to a goal that is painstakingly slow and undeniably distant. Their work proceeds in miniscule increments that require remarkable discipline, commitment, and skill. “Don’t you ever get bored?” I asked. All heads swiveled to my end of the table. They looked at me as if I had asked, “Is it possible that the earth is flat?” It wasn’t a stupid question—just an inconceivable one. “No!” Pragathi replied,”one small thing leads to another. It opens up.” 

“Like Windows?” 

“Yes, like that.”

Beaming as he surveyed the table, like Vince Lombardi talking about a championship team bearing down on a trophy, Dr Q declared, “What one of them discovers today may lead to a cure 50 years from now.”  I would never want to take on the adversary they are all determined to vanquish, but I am so grateful “the Q team” is committed to waging the battle. They lose patients they come to love and admire almost every day, yet they suit up in rigor and vision to celebrate US, so that one day we won’t have to dread the fight.