Dear Thankful Teacher,
In a few days, families will gather around harvest-themed tables complete with all the traditional Thanksgiving trimmings. Before the bird is carved, family members might hold hands (if that’s still a thing under COVID rule). Most likely, the patriarch of the family will say grace and thank God for the meal and the love that doesn’t change even in a global pandemic.
This year Thanksgiving will look much different than years past. Maybe there’s an empty straight back chair at the table that serves as a painful reminder that so much has been lost in just a few short-but very long-months. Maybe some families are alone for the first time.
Last year we hugged without care and watched Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade without realizing parades would become outlawed. We never dreamed in less than a year we would be hosting Zoom sessions to compare pecan pies.
The frustration over the lingering effects of COVID is enough to freeze a person’s heart colder than an unthawed Butterball turkey. However, for every hard heart, I’ve seen 100 softened by gratitude.
Many of these grateful hearts are from teachers. They’re thankful to be with their students and in their classrooms. They’re grateful for sports, even though their seasons look much different. They’re thankful for in-person learning and a chance to see colleagues they’ve missed. They’re thankful for students who want to be at school in a desperate way, and they’re thankful for laughs and kind gestures from strangers.
A few weeks ago, a teacher taught her students sign language for the word “smile,” so they could signal happiness from behind their masks. Another teacher sent a random school-wide email letting the faculty know how grateful she was to be on the same team with them. This is the same team that rallied together to set up a meal train for a colleague with cancer. These are the small things that let me know we are going to pull through this crisis and will once again hold hands to say grace.
When that day comes, I hope we won’t forget the miracles all around us- even in suffering.
On this exact day eight years ago, my doctor was prepping me for a D and C for a miscarriage. Exactly 27 minutes before the procedure, he found my son's heartbeat on a final ultrasound. It was, hands down, the happiest day of my life. We now call this day "Heart Day."
Heart Day changed our lives forever. It taught us that when you are on the brink of giving up on something- like the year 2020, life can, and will, return. It also taught us to be grateful for every single heartbeat thereafter- his, mine, yours, everyone's.
Isn't this what Thanksgiving is all about?
-CDB