Thanksgiving is one my favorite holidays because it’s all about people — family especially — and food. How can you go wrong with that? It’s a no-brainer feel-good day (football notwithstanding). So what could go wrong with Thanksgiving? Besides the traditional buzz-killers like travel woes on packed airplanes or weird family dynamics that you get to sweep under the rug the rest of the year, there’s one thing that irks me about Thanksgiving these days. Gratitude.

The word is on all our lips this week. Tomorrow, we’ll go around the laden Thanksgiving table, asking everyone in turn, “What are you grateful for?”

Blech.

Don’t get me wrong. I love gratitude. My Macbook’s built-in dictionary says that gratitude is the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. Nothing wrong with that. The world could use a lot more of it! But what I object to is the cramming down our throats of it. Gratitude through obligation. Yuck. Case in point:
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In an ideal world, Mommy and Daddy would love one another forever and together provide a warm, loving home for the children. But the real world is just that — real. Lives changes, relationships go awry, and the best of intentions sometimes fall through the floor. Mommy and Daddy split up. But who gets the kids?

In the past, this wouldn’t have been a question. Once upon a time, men owned everything, including the children. *Cough.* (I think we’ve moved past that, for the most part.) In our more recent past, the “tender years” doctrine held and kids went with their mothers, who were presumed to be the more nurturing parent. Now, things are flipping once again and more and more, fathers are getting custody of the kids, especially when Mom is a working mom and Dad has been taking care of the kids. Are working moms working themselves out of a relationship with their children?
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I let Mean Lady out this week. We were at the park, enjoying an unusually balmy northeast November weekend afternoon. The park is a huge wooden castle-like structure that was built by the community several years ago, and it holds hundreds of kids. Maybe thousands. And they were all there that day. Thousands of them. Screaming. Running. Jumping. Pushing. Screaming. Mostly screaming. And Mean Lady just had to come out.

Mean Lady didn’t like it when she saw a girl of about 6 run right onto a bouncy bridge where there was a 2-year old playing, toddling back and forth on his wee wobbly legs. And stand right where he was. And then jump. Hard. 2-year old predictably fell down and cried. Little girl ran off, but not before the Mean Lady cornered her and said that Jumping Hard like that on a bouncy bridge where there is a kid smaller than you is Not Cool. Little girl’s eyes got big and round and she edged away from Mean Lady, keeping a close eye on her for the next hour.
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