Lessons from Thanksgiving Week

Tuesday A.M.: Went downstairs to feed the cat. Discovered pipe had sprung a leak. (Of course. Our family tradition is to have some household mechanical failure or appliance malfunction just before a holiday!) Called the plumber. Cleaned up flood in basement. Tossed damaged and moldy items, some from boxes not unpacked since we moved ten years ago. Found lost marriage license in old box of knickknacks. A bit moldy but it can be cleaned up.

Tuesday P.M.: Went shopping for ingredients to our traditional menu. Stores much more crowded than I anticipated. Some supplies running low. Stood next to customer on cell phone lamenting the empty space where plain cranberries used to be. Bought pomegranate-flavored cranberries instead. ( a welcome discovery!)

Wednesday A.M.: Cooked Tofurkey, the mainstay of our erev Thanksgiving (the night before Thanksgiving) ritual dinner. Five pounds of tofu flavored with marinade made from honey-barbecue sauce, soy sauce, molasses, and apricot marmalade. Tofu is mashed and shaped and left to season over-night in the refrigerator. Added a new secret ingredient this year: honey peanut butter. A most successful gamble.

It was the ninth annual gathering of our thirty long-forbearing friends and family. And as usual, come Wednesday about noon, it looks like the food will never be ready, there will never enough, and it will not be edible. Two hours later, it somehow all comes together.

Ateret was a big help. She - the family artist - puts the final touches on the Tofurkey. This year, for a variety of technical reasons, it was shaped like a tortoise. More Tofurtle than Tofurkey. A big hit. We hope to create a whole menagerie of shapes over the years.

Wednesday afternoon: All is in order. Nothing to do but wait for guests. Went to the gym for a swim.

Wednesday P.M.: Show time. Wood-burning stove putting out warmth of all sorts. Family and friends, ages 6 weeks to 80's, filling our home. What could be better?

Thursday: Relaxed with family, and had our traditional deli Thanksgiving dinner in front of the fire.

Friday: Avram prepared food for Shabbat; family rested throughout the day. I returned to my outdoors woodworking for the first time since last year. A fabulously, brisk, crisp, crackling fall day. Scavenged wood, easing my way back into hand-sawing.

I started with smallish sticks. Now, there is no use sawing wood that you can break by force. Better to save your sawing muscles for the larger stuff. So as I selected my wood for our weekend fires, here is what I learned: there is an art to guessing just how far along the limb you can go before you can no longer break it by hand, or by stomping on it with your foot, or by bending it like a wishbone, an end in each hand and foot pressing out and away in the middle.

It is not a matter of girth alone. It is a combination of size and dryness, density and brittleness. It is partly felt in the heft of the wood, in the feel of its give. And partly sensitivity and intuition.

As always, the wood teaches me. As parent, friend, spouse, colleague, teacher, speaker I wonder how far can I prod, guide, press, tease, appeal to and entreat the other? How far before my exertions backfire, causing the other to stiffen so that in place of bend, resistance sets in?

Discovering that line, being aware of that spot where the other's core matches yours, is an invaluable gift. It is at that place where true meeting, honest wrestling, self-awareness, and loving give-and-take happen.