Man has almost unlimited power to do damage and cause suffering as we have been learning lately, and some

slight power to do good.

But as we grow up and pay attention to our surroundings, we see that we are beneficiaries of great gifts for which we can claim no credit.

And so we have a day of Thanksgiving in November, just as we're bracing for another winter.

My aunt Eleanor was the patron saint of Thanksgiving, and she rented a nearby Legion Hall,

organized a dinner for a hundred or more keelers

back when I was a kid, before cell phones.

So, instead of taking selfies, we had conversation.

My aunts told stories about the farm and how grandpa drove a horse-drawn mower to cut hay with the reins in one hand and a book in the other.

And the day the house burned down, and he raked through the ashes looking for photographs.

And how he drove home once with his first Model T Ford and lost control of the car and pulled back on the steering wheel yelling, whoa, as the car slid into the ditch,

and he sat in it laughing at himself.

I'm so thankful for those big reunions and for my aunt's friendship.

I live in New York City now and have a 1920 photograph on the wall of Grandpa

walking down the road with my 10-year-old dad on one side and tiny Eleanor on the other.

I'm grateful for my first grade teacher, Estelle Shaver, who kept me after school to read aloud to her as she corrected workbooks.

It was remedial reading, but she made it seem like a privilege, and I felt privileged

ever since then. For generations, women had the easy work of Thanksgiving, which was cooking the meal,

and men had the hard job of making conversations. They sat in the living room with a football

game on the TV, exchanging monosyllables after a fumble or a touchdown as familiar

smells drifted out of the kitchen where women told family secrets too shocking for men to be able to handle.

And I'm okay with that.

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