I love this time of year! I love celebrating the holidays! I was pondering what to write for this week’s post. I wanted to say more than simply Happy Thanksgiving. Then I came across this story in the Reader’s Digest and wanted to share, because sometimes the most moving lessons are taught by our students.
When Mrs. Klein told her first graders to draw a picture of something for which they were thankful, she thought how little these children, who lived in a deteriorating neighborhood, actually had to be thankful for. She knew that most of the class would draw pictures of turkeys or of bountifully laden Thanksgiving tables. That was what they believed was expected of them.
What took Mrs. Klein aback was Douglas’s picture. Douglas was so forlorn and likely to be found close in her shadow as they went outside for recess. Douglas’s drawing was simply this:
A hand, obviously, but whose hand? The class was captivated by his image. “I think it must be the hand of God that brings us food,” said one student.
“A farmer,” said another, “because they grow the turkeys.”
“It looks more like a policeman, and they protect us.” “I think,” said Lavinia, who was always so serious, “that it is supposed to be all the hands that help us, but Douglas could only draw one of them.”
Mrs. Klein had almost forgotten Douglas in her pleasure at finding the class so responsive. When she had the others at work on another project, she bent over his desk and asked whose hand it was.
Douglas mumbled, “It’s yours, Teacher.”
Then Mrs. Klein recalled that she had taken Douglas by the hand from time to time; she often did that with the children. But that it should have meant so much to Douglas …
Perhaps, she reflected, this was her Thanksgiving, and everybody’s Thanksgiving—not the material things given unto us, but the small ways that we give something to others.
For some, this year, there are a number of reasons why Thanksgiving may well be difficult to celebrate. Finding the spirit of thankfulness and feeling grateful might be hard to come by. Between the fires in California, the storms on the east coast, the state of our country, the condition of education, and so on and so on, do like Douglas did. Draw that “hand” in your heart, your mind, and your soul. Find that one thing you can be grateful for and hold onto that. It is there! And, for the rest of us, be that “hand” to somebody else!
Happy and Blessed
Thanksgiving!
