NOVEMBER 26 • 2020 | 27
wishes from friends and family,
viewed over and over and over
again. We held a group fami-
ly-game night and were able to
hear our 6-year-old grandson
read to us through FaceTime,
while we followed along with
an online version of the same
book.
Trivially, I am grateful that
the closing of area gyms allowed
me to shop for shoes — albeit
walking shoes — for the first
time in six months so I could
take my exercise regime outside
where another perk has been to
meet new neighbors and their
seemingly unendingly multiply-
ing brood of dogs.
I am gladdened to know
our niece is teaching herself
to play violin and another has
turned her furniture building
talent into an actual business.
I am heartened at the thought
of several of our friends’
adult
expat children moving home
when their cities shut down and
their jobs shifted to online, one
of whom delivered a Michigan-
born baby during the pandem-
ic.
I am grateful for online
religious connections through
synagogues, webinars and inspi-
rational articles about coping
and survival; and for being able
to attend our kids’
summer
sports games and for the guy
referred to as the “sergeant at
arms,
” who walked among the
players and fans offering masks
and separating the groups with
his 6-foot-pole.
I am thankful for the incen-
tive of my parents to get up
each day, get dressed, make the
bed and do something orga-
nized and constructive. I am
both thankful and baffled by
the sheer excitement of leaving
the house to do anything from
Kroger pickup to Yad Ezra vol-
unteer deliveries.
TIME TO BOND
Less scheduling brings more
time for connecting.
Our kids created a family
WhatsApp group through
which we can all participate,
and in the absence of fall youth
sports and play dates, Grandma
and Papa joyfully have become
a regular after-school activity
through FaceTime, Google
Hangouts and Facebook’
s Kids
Messenger.
I am grateful for newfound
time with just me, with my hus-
band and with our local chil-
dren and my mom and dad, all
of whom we see only when the
weather permits outdoor meet-
ings. The visits have allowed
for one-on-one talks with the
kids and treasured stories from
my parents — like hearing how
my soft-spoken, learned rab-
bi-grandfather enjoyed watch-
ing boxing matches through a
storefront bar window in the
1930s, and sorting through their
old photos and memorabilia,
including an envelope my dad
tried to gift me that held a curl
from my first haircut.
Locally, I am grateful to
have witnessed our great-
niece become a bat mitzvah in
Temple Israel’
s outdoor sanctu-
ary and to dance the hora at the
lakefront wedding of our niece
and nephew, in a circle of guests
each connected by a 6-foot-long
crocheted, fabric chain.
I am immensely thankful
for vicarious memories of our
grandson’
s bar mitzvah that
travel and health concerns
prevented us from attending in
New Jersey this past summer.
I am beyond appreciative
for the week’
s worth of photos
and stories and the videos of a
balloon-filled, musical, drive-by
party and the recorded surprise
arrival of our Michigan daugh-
ter and her children as the only
out-of-town bar mitzvah guests.
I am grateful to have participat-
ed in a four-generation Zoom
celebration and for the minds-
eye visual of a young man being
called to the Torah between a
swing set and a vegetable gar-
den in a decorated backyard,
makeshift synagogue.
Right about now, my internal
clock may not know what day it
is, but it knows it’
s time to pre-
pare for Thanksgiving — in its
new and unprecedented form.
We won’
t be inflating air mat-
tresses and digging out the fold-
ing chairs and remote-control
battery-operated “looks like the
real thing but safe for kids” can-
dles. But we will still unpack the
ceramic pilgrim salt and pepper
shakers and kid-constructed,
feathered-turkey decorations
from years’
past. We will set
our smallest table, with its lap-
top-centerpiece angled to view
the tables of our far-distanced
family, who will do the same.
Today I am grateful that I
have something meaningful to
look forward to and to laugh
at, as my kids try to figure out
my “some of the directions
and measurements are in my
head” recipes, send funny
Thanksgiving memes and
respond to the picture I took of
an actual live turkey perched in
a shopping cart at my corner
Kroger.
This is not the Thanksgiving
any of us expected, but it’
s
the one that will make forev-
er-memories. Someday we’
ll
say, “Remember the year when
we all had Thanksgiving dinner
apart — but together?”
I’
ll deeply miss our in-per-
son gathering this year, but I
know the hugs aren’
t nearly as
important as the people who
bring them. And for every sin-
gle one of them, who I hope to
be hugging soon, I am the most
grateful.
“THIS IS NOT THE THANKSGIVING
ANY OF US EXPECTED, BUT IT’S
THE ONE THAT WILL MAKE
FOREVER-MEMORIES. SOMEDAY
WE’LL SAY, ‘REMEMBER THE YEAR
WHEN WE ALL HAD THANKSGIVING
DINNER APART — BUT TOGETHER?’”
— SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Jake and Ari Schon of West Bloomfield/Huntington Woods, Zevi
Beneson of Passaic, N.J. and Noam Dorfman of Boca Raton, Fla.,
ready for the Thanksgiving Day Lions game in 2015.