There Goes My Hero....
"With gratitude, optimism is sustainable" MJF
It’s Thanksgiving Day in the States, a day that ostensibly celebrates the first harvest of a small group of Europeans who survived a harrowing transatlantic voyage to escape religious persecution and establish a colony in the new (to them) world where they could worship as they pleased. The small group of Pilgrims would never have survived were it not for the indigenous Wampanoag who welcomed them and taught them how to live in concert with the natural world. Thanksgiving—as it has come to be celebrated—is envisioned as an entirely peaceful feast at which the two groups came together to celebrate the fact that the colony had eeked out enough resources to not die off entirely. The rest of the story (if you care to challenge that idyllic picture cultural appropriation has popularized) isn’t something to celebrate; but try to tell that to the generations of schoolchildren who cut out gold buckles and funny hats, headdress feathers and loincloths, to wear to the pageants commemorating that momentous day.
In the modern day, new traditions have since sprung up. My favorite among them is the time that we take to consider what we are grateful/thankful for. When my boys were younger, we would make construction paper chains with a bit of gratitude written on each link; when hung on the curtain rods in the living room, the chains also functioned as the beginning of our Christmas decorating. Social media has since made it’s indelible mark on the practice of naming our gratitudes as it has in everything else; I expect my feeds to be saturated with such messages as the day wears on.
Keeping with this newish tradition, I am writing (for myself and for Parkies everywhere) to express my profound gratitude for Michael J Fox. The grace and humility with which he has managed this disease—”the gift that keeps on taking” in his words—has buoyed me more times than I can count. He is just enough older than me and in the progression of his disease that he blazes trails for me that I would have to figure out on my own otherwise. And the cognitive shifts that he has made, somehow seeing the good amidst all the bad, has been lifesaving for me. It’s really easy to focus on what PD is taking from me, harder to recognize the gifts. His invitation to seek them out and bring them up to the light is one that I have gladly followed, and it has made all the difference.
So on this day that we give thanks, I do so for my hero Michael J Fox