Sharing Good Food and Company Over the Holidays
We all have our Thanksgiving traditions. Mine began over 30 years ago when I cooked my first turkey for 20 or so Community Access tenants living in our buildings on the Lower East Side. Like all good executives, I pretended I knew exactly what I was doing, but in reality there was a lot of pressure on a young guy less than six months into his job to get this one right.
The details are lost to history, but I know we ate the turkey, so it must have been okay.
Flash forward three decades and, fortunately for everyone, my days in the kitchen on Thanksgiving are few and far between. Instead, I try to be a guest at more than a dozen dinners we host around the agency, beginning on Tuesday evening and extending until late in the afternoon on Thursday. Preparations for these feasts begin weeks in advance with community meetings to design the menu and dole out cooking assignments among staff and tenants. The results are amazing and quite delicious.
More important than the food is the sense of community and camaraderie that a well-organized and -executed party can foster. Sometimes people read poems, or say a few words about why they are thankful. Most often, tenants are grateful to have a nice home and friends to share the meal.
As we head into Round Two of the holiday season, the whole busy routine will be repeated once more at the end of December. At one of our sites, the tenants have decided to do even more by launching a coat and food drive. Why? Because many had been homeless and hungry themselves and remember how good it felt to have warm clothes and a hot meal. If you want to help, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and I’ll send you the address to drop off your donated coat and food.
Once again I am humbled by the generosity of our tenants, staff and program participants. It shows that giving back is a part of all us and much easier to do when you’re living in a safe place called home.
Happy holidays to you and yours and thank you for your support.
(P.S. In case you're wondering, here's a photo of me from one of CA's first holiday gatherings...)
