Pat Taub
GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN
Thanksgiving 2020 will be unlike any we’ve known, somewhere between weird and desolate.
The CDC urges us to stay at home and skip family gatherings, which means that many will feel isolated. Zoom is a useful prosthesis, but Aunt Mildred can’t pass the biscuits through cyberspace. It may be difficult for even the most optimistic to find something to be thankful for, with children or parents or people we love so far off that we can’t hug them. And the biscuits so far away.
But my title is not whimsical, and if you think, “Isn’t that egotistical? Self-congratulatory? Self-absorbed?” please humor me. We’re trained from childhood that self-praise is not gracious. Remember that Narcissus fell in and drowned. Religious texts instruct us that if you boast of your good deeds, they vanish.
A life without loving affirmations seems barren.
Think of the baby monkeys who clung piteously to the “mother” made of wire, looking for affection, when they were removed from their natural mothers. In his autobiography, Bing Crosby said of child-rearing that you only kiss the baby when it’s sleeping. Of his four sons, two were alcoholics; two shot themselves. So much for measuring love out with an eye-dropper.
One of psychologist Harry Harlow’s infant monkeys, whose mother was substituted for a wire and cloth form
We know how to love other people. We might be able to say that we love ourselves, but how many can thank themselves? One of my favorite Thirties songs is THANKS A MILLION, sung by Louis Armstrong, but I couldn’t sing it to myself.
The award-winning cookbook writer Lorna Sass tutored inner-city children. She learned that it was essential to say to them, “Good JOB!” when they succeeded. When was the last time you thought, “I didn’t think I could do that, but I DID!” even if it sounds like the Little Engine going uphill.
But try it. If you like to subdivide, thank your feet for getting you moving, congratulate your brain and eyes for reading this. Celebrate your heart for its reassuring thump. Or, in the words of a song I learned from watching Benny Hill, “GIVE YOURSELF A PAT ON THE BACK.” Florrie Forde, shown below, certainly qualifies as a Wise Older Woman.
Or you might prefer the affirmation of blues matriarch Ida Cox in ‘FORE DAY CREEP, “I may be old, I’m getting up in years / (repeat) / But I can still climb a hill / Without shifting my gears.”
At this holiday, if the sight of the deserted dining-room table threatens to evoke tears, add some positive self-congratulation and self-gratitude for our comfort. Grin into the mirror now and on Thursday morning, and say, “That’s not so bad,” or “Damnit, I’m still here!” or “Covid won’t break this heart.”
Covid’s lockdown portends a radically different Thanksgiving, where many formerly crowded dining room tables will now be empty.
In public, we allow ourselves to feel proud when we’ve accomplished something, without waiting for the letter of commendation. Let us go further, and open our hearts to be grateful for ourselves and let those feelings some call “immodest” reverberate inside, tending the garden inside. How can we take good care of others if we allow ourselves to disintegrate?
I’d feel silly hugging myself or holding my own hand, but an internal high-five I can do.
You don’t have to be a soccer champion to raise your arms in self-pride
Forty years ago, my dissertation advisor had a mug he proudly displayed with DAMN I’M GOOD etched into the clay. Too much, then and now. But we can quietly appreciate ourselves without needing to write it in capital letters.
And while we are being thankful for others, let us thank our hearts and brains and bodies for being resilient, so that we can persevere. As we will.
And thank you for reading this.
