It's coming right up. Where I live and perhaps you as well, the chance to place gratitude at the center of the table is here. My mother was not an adventurous cook. There were no water chestnuts and leeks in her stuffing, nor sweet potatoes with crushed pistachios and maple syrup. But she provided the standard American menu year after year, and welcomed many folks at her table. There was always a centerpiece of gourds and apples with an expanding paper pumpkin from Hallmark. 

 

Even though my ingredients are often different than the ones my mother relied on, I feel a connection to her. Like her I show up each day at the stove and pull together rice and carrots, sometimes with a ginger sauce for extra flavor. Her shopping list was plain, but gratitude was embedded in her modus operandi. 

 

"Lower your expectations, raise your appreciation," was a phrase she used. 

 

She was of course part of the Greatest Generation, the one where a seven hundred square foot house was as good as a palace, and a job sufficed regardless of whether it fulfilled you and had stock options. Games happened with ropes in the yard, and a tin can not from recycling, which hadn't been invented yet. 

 

When circumstances vary as broadly as they have between her era and that of her great grandchildren, I am curious. Maybe discrepancies between wifi and olly-olly-oxen-free for getting the attention of your friends, don't matter as much as we think. It is possible that such particulars are nuances to keep things interesting, and to further disguise the Real game. Which is to place gratitude at the center of the table.