I love Thanksgiving. For me it is like Christmas Eve, an endearing day. The first year in the USA, I was a student and had a classmate who was part of my work group in several subjects. She asked me if I had any plans for Thanksgiving, I didn’t have any plans beyond relaxing during the long weekend to prepare exams and papers due before Christmas. Without hesitation she told me, my boyfriend will pick you up on Thursday around 4 pm. Her boyfriend was a very pleasant guy training in the Army Ranger School at that time. He picked me up as agreed and drove me from Baltimore to the Washington suburbs, about an hour’s drive. My friend’s parents fled Hungary in 1956 when Russia invaded their country. They had worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC, for several decades. Dinner was delicious, I brought a Rioja to improve my scarce conversation, and I have to say that I really felt welcomed as if it was my home. At the end of dinner, they drove me back home and life went on.
Over time I have understood how Thanksgiving unites all of us in this country. And for that I am going to give thanks today. I have learned that you can look at things from abundance or scarcity, and it is always better to adopt an optimistic, promising vision of anything we do, with our feet on the ground, but always generous. Today I want to give thanks from that spirit of abundance.
Family makes you different, it is actually a costly blessing that no one would trade for anything. Family is the future, what is coming, what is yet to be defined. I am thankful for my family’s future, wherever it may take us.
When I look back, I want to give thanks for my dad’s books, for his quotes of Machado before Alfonso Guerra discovered him, for the freedom to explore, read and think. For teaching me that there is a world out there, for teaching me how to chop firewood and for teaching me to defend my ideas even if the audience does not support them. For having an open mind and giving the gift of silence so that I could discover my own path. For accepting the consequences of the exercise of that freedom without complaint. It’s true dad, being free is hard, you know it well.
Thanks mum for that warrior in me that comes from you and for that work spirit. My mum unknowingly embodies Kant’s moral imperative, things are done because it is the right thing to do, no matter the effort required to do so. For her there is a very clear script of what is right, and that is not disputed, it is done! In this era of moral relativism and blurry moral frontiers, it is good to remember it.
My older sister is younger than me, but she is already the reference of the family in our current stage. Thanks to her I discovered what bravery is when I was too lazy to leave the nest. She went to France then to Barcelona and she has always taken the bull by the horns in any challenge that life has thrown her way. In my first months in Barcelona, her Spanish omelettes were heaven, a taste from home between 24-h ER shifts. On top of that, she makes a world-class Tarte Tatin.
My brother…He is quiet, does things without a fuss, but he has continuous affections. His idea of beauty is a discipline of clean lines merged with thoughtful simplicity. His patience to arrive and not settle for the average is a lesson that has served me well! We had great times chopping wood for winter, a mix of few words and old axes with blunt edges. My brother doesn’t give hugs, he makes a Spanish omelette or a great paella and pours his best wine on your glass. Everyone says I love you in their own way.
My little sister, she will always be my little sister, is pure fire. She burns and warms, at the same time and without measure! When in college one of my fondest memories were saturday movies at 3 Pm, first session. We used to go to Avenida cinema or Carlos III Cinema… it was a different time. I remember watching Willow with her! I hear again the applause and enthusiasm from the audience when the prince and the pretty girl kissed at the end of the movie. It was a pleasure to see in the front row the joy of someone who discovers wonderful stories for the first time. Judith, we have to go back to the movies!
I have been so lucky! Have few friends, but they are good ones. My friends have always been there on all occasions, the bright ones and the others. I believe friendship is measured by that silence that says it all, even if we haven’t spoken for a while. Truly blessed!. They have opened the doors of their homes, their families, and they have listened to me… many times to tell me to shut up and stop my nonsense.
I have had wonderful teachers in every place I have gone to learn. They have taught me to ask, to search, they have let me err and they have allowed me to redo, rethink and fix. They have taught me that the search must continue.
I have met very good people along the way some of whom I now count among my friends. From them I have learned, as Maestro Ortega said to “stop, temper and command”, they have taught me to smile, to not take myself so seriously, to fall and get back up. They have shared with me who they are, what they know, what they have, you couldn’t ask for more! They have accepted me as I am and continue to call my nonsense…nonsense.
I want to thank all those writers who left their best in those pages, because they were talking to mankind… they were talking to me. Thank you!
And I thank life for living on a true hug and an a shared silence.
Of course, this all has been one great God’s blessing!