What We’re Grateful For

Today, Americans across the country will sit down with family and friends for Thanksgiving dinner. Work, school, obligations—all will take a break, as the hustle of daily life slows to a crawl.

Here at The Free Press, we firmly believe in the importance of slowing down sometimes: to be with family, to eat good food—and yes, perhaps, to engage in a political debate or two across the table.

But more than anything, we believe there’s nothing quite as valuable as gratitude. And this year, we have a lot to be grateful for. Read on as the extended Free Press family gives thanks for friends, chess, Jesse Eisenberg, health, and everything in between.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Joe Nocera, deputy managing editor

Let’s see now. My three grown children all have wonderful spouses and careers they enjoy. My 15-year-old is a whiz on the tennis court, a straight-A student, and an all-around great kid. My wife tries to keep me healthy so I won’t die anytime soon. My five grandchildren are all delightful. In a few weeks, my 3-year-old granddaughter is going to have a sleepover at Grandpa Joe’s apartment for the first time. How can I not be thankful?

Gabe Kaminsky, investigative reporter

Things I’m grateful for this year: Berry Celsius drink, the boys at the auto body shop for teaching me a financially painful lesson about texting sources and driving, the Deliver Me from Nowhere Bruce Springsteen biopic, my amazing mom, the creatures of Washington whose Machiavellian impulses provide something to report on, God, my flag football team for blocking for me in the backfield, and—of course—The Free Press for hiring me.

Will Rahn, senior editor and writer

At the risk of sounding like a sap, I am grateful for the kindness I am continually shown by my wife, my friends, my family, my colleagues. To paraphrase Camus, we expect so much of our friends when we are younger: constant attention and affection and patience for our many quirks and foibles. That is too much to ask of people, particularly as we get older. But in moments of crisis—and crisis and disaster are, of course, just part of life—I know there are people I can turn to, both close by and far away. What greater blessing is there?

Bari Weiss, co-founder and editor

Nellie and I live in New York, which puts us a plane ride away from my parents in Pittsburgh and a longer one to hers in San Francisco. With a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, we often have to call in backup.

Suzy has something she calls “a life.” This is where Uncle Bill comes in.

Nellie’s uncle by blood and mine by incredible luck of marriage, Bill is no one’s idea of normal. He is an architect who lives in a house with a giant disco ball and stairs with no railing; it is a death trap for children. For ours, it’s their favorite place. There they have met a cat with a beaded necklace, looked at maps of the world, and tasted fish roe for the first time.

That makes him sound like a snob, I’m sure, but he’s not at all. He loves beauty. But he loves his family most of all. When they spilled someone’s glass of red wine all over his white rug, he didn’t flinch.

Mostly he shows up on weeknights or weekends with groceries. He has seen our family through norovirus and pink eye (and that was just last month).

Without Uncle Bill, our children would be wearing muslin sacks. He makes sure they have (faux) furs.

Where Nell and I might slide into aesthetic mediocrity, Uncle Bill wouldn’t allow it. And he’s always right.

I’m so thankful for him.

Larissa Phillips, contributor

It wasn’t so long ago that I nursed my 3-month-old daughter and then laid her in a bassinet behind my chair and finally tucked into my Thanksgiving dinner. But wait, I probably also turned my attention to my 4-year-old son, the pickiest of eaters, to urge him to just try the stuffing or roasted squash before finally, quickly, tearing through my own food before the baby woke up.

God, I miss those little creatures who once ruled my life. It’s hard to imagine their chubby arms wrapped around my neck, their hot breath whispering in my ear, the endless detritus and emotion and needs of little children, which we never stopped managing. But the years flew by. They became lovely big kids, delightful companions who shared so many of my interests and seemed capable of mastering anything—horses, banjo, painting, fractions, Harry Potter.

Then we had the grueling teen years, so difficult in one case it seemed we might never recover. But we did. And now my kids are 22 and 26 and live elsewhere and manage their own lives and meals and bedtimes, and my husband and I are as free with our time as we were in our pre-parenting 20s. But the best thing is happening: Both kids are coming for Thanksgiving. For several hours on Thursday I’ll get to feel that quiet joy of having both my grown children back under my roof again, at the same time, preparing and eating dinner all together. There really is nothing else.

Emily Yoffe, senior editor

This year, as every year on the fourth Thursday in November, I am grateful that my favorite meal of the year has been prepared by someone else. That’s seven decades of glorious burnished turkey skin (and dark meat only) not made in my oven.

Sure, I’ve contributed side dishes—homemade cranberry sauce, a pumpkin-ginger pie—but I’ve never had to sweat the Thanksgiving big stuff. When Prince Charles finally became King Charles, I was worried that this presaged the Thanksgiving turkey crown finally falling on me. But unlike Charles, I have successfully aged out of such duties.

So for my whole life, I’ve gotten to sit at many different tables in many different places with people I love, all of whom know how to cook, and who understand the turkey leg (only one of them!)—is mine.

Maya Sulkin, reporter

I’m grateful for the people in my life who make me laugh. My co-workers, who can somehow make conversations about the Muslim Brotherhood or the Chinese Communist Party feel fun. My boyfriend, who forces me to laugh at myself when I expose my more ridiculous neuroses. My friends, who remind me that there’s more to life than the Muslim Brotherhood and the CCP. And of course my family, who, when it feels like there’s nothing to laugh about at all, always pick up my calls to prove me wrong.

Freya Sanders, senior editor

Today, where I live in London, the sun will set at 3:59 p.m. That’s an awful lot of darkness to get through—especially if, like me, you’re the kind of person who needs sunlight to be in a good mood. I despise winter, and for some reason, putting on all the lights in the house makes it worse. The only way I get through it is by lighting a lot of candles—of every shape, size, color, and scent. In deepest December, if I’m working from home, I get through four a day. If I go out for the evening, there’s always a moment of panic about having forgotten to extinguish one. Maybe next year, I’ll have to say I’m thankful for firefighters. But for now, I’m thankful for candles.

Kara Kennedy, contributor

I’m grateful for Thanksgiving because it is the only holiday my husband shows any enthusiasm for—except for the Fourth of July, but that feels a little fratty in comparison. I’m grateful to raise my daughter in this country that I get to call home, where I proudly hang my American flag outside next to the Welsh flag, which flies just below it because my husband once told me it was illegal in this country to fly any other flag above the American one, and I believed him.

I’m grateful for Google, which helped me debunk this. It also helped me to debunk what he once told me about bananas—that the banana flavoring we taste in milkshakes or candy is based on what bananas used to taste like, before the reigning species, the Gros Michel, was mostly wiped out by a fungal disease in the 1950s. There’s a tad bit of truth to his theory but it’s mainly wrong. I’m grateful for my husband, who is mostly full of wisdom, but sometimes not.

Elliot Ackerman, contributor and writer of “A Man Should Know”

I’m grateful for the little things: dinners at home with my wife; when one of my children teaches me something new; when the dogs sleep in the bed; when I finish a piece of work that I’m proud of; and everyone I get to collaborate with on that work. The little things. Which I guess are the big things.

Clara Grusq, art director

I have a love-hate relationship with chess. My father is a great chess player, and he put me in chess club when I was 6 (yes, I was very popular). On the few nights a month when my mother worked late and it was just him and me, he would bake us each a potato, which we’d eat with pickled herring and green onions he’d hold by the stalk and bite straight through, a gesture I’d always imitate. Once our stomachs were full, he’d put on the live Woodstock rendering of “Soul Sacrifice” by Santana (where he told me everyone onstage was tripping on acid), pull out the chessboard for a game, and most of the time I’d lose miserably, which only deepened my resentment for it.

Now, my wonderful boyfriend and I have somehow turned our once-weekly matches into almost daily occurrences. Almost every night after dinner for the past few months he’ll set the chessboard on the table and beg for one game, which eventually turns into a best-out-of-three scenario. He wins. All three games. It drives me absolutely mad. Chess is for calm, calculated thinkers. I’m too aggressive. My strategy is to go straight for the kill, and I can never seem to coordinate more than two threatening pieces against the opposing king at once, which I heard is how you win. But for all the madness chess stirs in me, I’m grateful for the patient, loving people sitting across the board and for the small eternities those games have given me with them.

Suzy Weiss, co-founder and reporter

Feeling down about how, when I look outside at 5 p.m, it is pitch black, I texted a friend; Want to see a movie? He’s a director, one of those guys who’s seen them all, and he insisted we go to a showing of Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders. Normally I’d say French New Wave is a little rich for my blood—I can handle subtitles and I’ll do black and white, but I’m not sophisticated enough to do both—except given how gloomy it was I would’ve gone to the premiere of a light bulb.

I love going to the movies. I would’ve paid a hundred bucks to see One Battle After Another; that’s how entertaining it was, and I thought about moments in Oh, Hi! weeks after I’d seen it. Even the movies I didn’t like, like Bugonia and After the Hunt, I loved seeing. I’m grateful that, at the theater, someone out there who is not me is programming the show. I’m thankful that for the most part, people don’t use their phones, and that for 90 minutes or two hours, everyone is sitting with their backs to the door, looking at a wall, and into another world, together. Going to the movies is both a private and public experience, like being on the subway or out at a restaurant, all urban pleasures I hope that I’ll never have to live without.

Outside it was dull and cold, but in the theater, over unbuttered popcorn and ginger ale—a combo my cinephile friend swears by—we were warm, and the movie was a romp.

Evan Gardner, Free Press fellow

Although it may sound like a paid advertisement, the biggest thing I’m thankful for this year is the Free Press people. From the wonderful live events we’ve had to the smiling faces in our office every morning, TFP is a community like no other, and I am so grateful for all of the genuine friendships that it’s brought me. (My two runners-up: sweatpants and Sunday Night Football).

Rachel Price, head of product

I’m grateful for iCloud storage. I lost two grandparents this year, but I’m lucky to have thousands of photos, videos, and voice notes that let me feel close to them anytime I want.

Rick Brooks, news and investigations editor

I am grateful for the tiny beaten-up house at 202 Charles Avenue in High Point, North Carolina, where my mom put us back together as a family. It had two bedrooms, a two-burner hot plate, and cost maybe $80 a month. It is also where I began to imagine the future, brought to me by an AM/FM radio, books from the school library, and my subscription to The Village Voice. On Thanksgiving Day, I will park outside in my rental car, remember for a moment what those years were like, and then drive away.

Sean Fischer, chief of staff

I’m grateful for the cold, indifferent baristas who staff my local coffee shop. There’s a transcendent quality in the way they make me feel both unwelcome (their unsmiling faces) and needed (a glint of gratitude in their eye when I tap “10 percent”). If I could make an americano as well as they do, I too would wear black every day and stare people down. They keep me running and are the main reason I get out of bed every day, second only to The Free Press.

Tyler Cowen, columnist

I am grateful for how many parts of the world I can visit freely. I have been to roughly 105 countries and have not had serious problems getting to them, entering them, or leaving them. Nor have I contracted any serious illnesses abroad.

I do feel some recent growth in restrictions. For instance, I cannot go to Russia and be assured of my safety, nor would I feel comfortable visiting Ukraine at the current moment, given the ongoing Russian attacks. Nonetheless, so very much of the world is accessible to us, whenever we wish to be there.

This is an unparalleled opportunity, without precedent in the history of mankind.

Josh Code, assistant editor

I am grateful for TSA precheck, Mariah Carey, and the Bible.

Ryan Engelhardt, business operations associate

I’m endlessly grateful for my people, the old and the new, who add so much color, meaning, and adventure to my life. I’m grateful for snow (even the slush) and the childlike wonder every snowfall brings that reminds me I made it to New York City, baby! I’m grateful for Shabbat dinners that make the world slow down and remind me how many people are out there to love and the lessons still to be learned. I’m grateful for the rock and roll that raised me, steadied me, and will outlive me, and for the rare New York nights when you can make out the stars and constellations over the NYC skyline. I’m grateful for my glasses, especially when they’re spotless, for giving me the wildly unappreciated gift of sight. There is nothing quite like being able to see the world clearly.

Speaking of clarity. . . enter The Free Press, not just an institution but a movement and a mindset and a community. I cannot believe how much I love this place and this team.

And finally, my grandma Marcia, a.k.a. “the incredible shrinking woman,” who just kicked cancer’s tuchus against all odds. Of all the rock stars in the world, you are my favorite. This one’s for you, Grams!

Peter Savodnik, senior editor

I was having a drink with an old friend, and I told him that my 7-year-old was going through a rough stretch at school, and that he wanted to play flag football, and he asked what I thought of that—he knew what I thought of that. I said, “Look, I played classical piano, and I was editor of the school paper, and I always thought the football guys were, you know. . . ” That was when he cut in: “I was one of the football guys.” “You were unusual,” I said. “Not really,” he said. Then he added: “Be honest: Just because you don’t like football doesn’t mean he won’t. Be big enough to acknowledge that you and the Little Man are not the same person, and you can’t make him into you and, most importantly, football might make him happy.”

Anyway, my wife signed him up, and a few weeks later I went to see him at practice and I brought a book, but instead of reading, I couldn’t help but watch my son, who seemed so alive, zigzagging around the field, catching the ball, fumbling it, laughing, colliding with the other boys. Point is: This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for friends who dispense with the niceties and tell it like it is, which is to say: friends. And, I suppose, football. I’m grateful for football, too.

Jillian Lederman, staff editor

I never wanted to move to New York. But work brought me here, and it turns out I love this city. I love when the flowers begin to bud and the light lingers just long enough for the kids to walk home in the evenings. And when it gets dark at 4 p.m., I love that I can taste the chill in the air and watch the sun slip behind the skyscrapers from the office window. I love when the restaurants drape their doors with garlands and the trees sparkle and the parks transform into winter wonderlands. And I love getting to do it all over again.

I am grateful for the quiet delights of this frantic city—but even more, for the job that lets me live here, and the people I get to share it with.

Adam Feldman, associate producer

This Thanksgiving I have a newfound appreciation for ninth-grade biology class. Nothing tormented my squeamish 14-year-old self quite like that class. Each week it found new ways to confuse, bore, and repulse me. I had both a mental and physical aversion to learning anything about the human body. I hyperventilated over the epidermis. I still don’t understand Punnett squares. I passed out during the birthing video. You get the picture.

All of that changed when my dad needed a kidney transplant earlier this year. In a matter of hours—thanks to my mom’s donation and the skill of physicians who actually paid attention in class—modern medicine did something extraordinary. And it reminded me that despite the tribal politics, doomerism, and algorithm-fueled despair, we’re still living in an era of remarkable human flourishing—built, in part, on those “boring” principles that once flew over my head. For that, I will be forever grateful.

Jed Rubenfeld, columnist

What I feel luckiest about and most grateful for: my wife Amy, the birth of Ralphie, who at this moment is being lulled to sleep by his grandmother (aka Amy), and the health of his mom, our daughter Sophia. Also, living in the United States of America.

Sally Satel, contributor

I am thankful for Jesse Eisenberg. In late October, the actor, screenwriter, and Hollywood magician announced that he would be donating a kidney to a stranger. “I’m so excited to do it,” he said. “It’s essentially risk-free and so needed. I think people will realize that it’s a no-brainer.”

So true. A no-brainer. Speaking as a two-time recipient—and a committed advocate for improving the organ shortage—I can say it is one of the few gifts that are as transforming for the giver as for the receiver. Eisenberg’s transplant surgery is scheduled for December, and he said he’d be up for meeting the recipient “as long as they don’t want my other kidney.” I can’t help believing that such depth of generosity and good humor stir within many others—and that Eisenberg will move some of them to act.

Catherine Morrissette, booker and publicist

This year I am thankful for the pigeons that trill on my kitchen windowsill. When I first moved to the city I was worried I was giving up real birds and all the names and calls we learned as kids in Maine. I’m still grateful whenever I see a cardinal, a blue jay, or a red-winged blackbird, but the pigeons don’t disappoint me like I thought they would. It’s nice to see familiar faces.

Dana Schuster, features editor

I’m thankful for the time my son and I were cuddling and he asked if we should make a statue of us so we could remember the moment forever. I’m thankful for my daughter, who enjoys eavesdropping on suburban mom gossip. I’m thankful that Bethenny Frankel brought back chicken salad and that I married a man who loves to cook. I’m thankful to have joined The Free Press this year and excited for what’s to come!

Daniel Hallac, chief growth officer

This year I am grateful for live music and the way it brings people together. In a world dominated by headphones, there is something powerful about standing in a crowd as a song moves through everyone at once. The Oasis reunion concert is a night that still lives in me. Hearing those songs with tens of thousands of people who knew and sang every word reminded me of the beauty of sharing something you love with strangers. Moments like that make the world feel a little less divided and a lot more human.

Erin Otwell, photo and art editor

I am thankful for my father’s death.

To clarify, I am not thankful my father died or the suffering he went through, but for how his weeks in home hospice gave closure to a complicated relationship and renewed my value in my family.

After a brief and failing battle with illness, my father chose to stop treatment and spend his remaining days at home. It was a weirdly comforting feeling, the simplicity of being in this small unit again, the worries and issues of my own adult life in the distance. We could all focus on being a family and loving my dad. It got to a point where all I could do was hold his hand. He’d reach out for it if he woke up and thought no one was there.

Through all his suffering during those last days, I saw forgiveness and true love. I am sorry we couldn’t find it before it got to that point. However, I am thankful that his death came with closure, dignity and, I believe, peace.

Mark Gimein, business and tech editor

I am a Gen Xer, so I am generationally sparing in gratitude. But I am grateful for being part of the overlooked cohort, with our well-honed sense of irony. I am grateful to my parents for having parted the sea and taken me out of the Soviet Union (especially to my mother, the driving force behind our exodus), back in the time when that country still existed and was the world’s top exporter of political jokes. I’m grateful for my fellow Gen X spouse, who is my partner in skepticism but even more in every joy. Of course I’m grateful for my son, who sees everything and would absolutely let me know if he wasn’t mentioned. And I’m grateful for being the new guy at The Free Press, because I can say all these obvious and true things and can wait until next year to come up with some more clever lines.

Chelsea Jacobson, social media intern

To quote George Burns, I’m grateful for “having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family. . . in another city.”

Candace Kahn, executive producer

There is a special kind of gratitude that follows the experience of touching death. I don’t mean to say I’ve had a near-death experience, the kind you see in movies where someone comes back to life after flatlining for four minutes. I mean the kind where you’ve been on a knife’s edge between very, very good and so very bad. The kind where you know the train could have swerved in your direction, and by nothing but God’s grace, it did not.

I have been on that brink just twice in my life. Once, when I was 17 and totaled my car. The second was earlier this year, when a caregiver almost killed my 5-day-old baby.

The sense of gratitude I have this Thanksgiving for my children is so overwhelming that I have to actively fight an immense and primal urge to throw all my obligations—work, laundry, groceries—out the window and do nothing but hug and kiss them all day long.

Joan Didion famously wrote after the sudden death of her husband that “life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” I read that two decades ago, but I didn’t really understand it. Now, when I sit down to dinner each night, I know that the meal doesn’t always conclude with a slice of chocolate cake. And every time it does, it’s a miracle.

Joanna Citrinbaum Zerlin, copy editor

I am thankful for my family, our good health and happiness, and that we have clothes to wear, food to eat, and a roof over our heads. I am also grateful for friends and colleagues, and all the other people who make our lives brighter on a daily basis.

Tanya Lukyanova, video journalist

I’m very grateful for the “Shared Album” feature on the iPhone. My family has one going, where we post snippets of our daily lives from across multiple continents. It’s basically our private Instagram, minus the strangers and the algorithm. Even my 86-year-old grandmother endured an iPhone tutorial to join in. Now she FaceTimes me, concerned, if more than two days go by without fresh toddler content. (I’m also immensely grateful for FaceTime.)

And speaking of the toddler: I’m indescribably grateful for the small army of nannies, daycare staff, teachers, and other competent adults who take such good care of her and teach her far more than I ever could. And I’m grateful for our daughter herself, of course, who teaches my husband and me just as much in return.

Finally, I’m deeply thankful to live in this great, exceptional country that has a special holiday designed to interrupt our busy lives, reconnect with loved ones, and appreciate our good fortune.

And overeat, of course.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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