 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.

