This Thanksgiving, Remember the Ladies... It was an easy question, but thats what made it hard to answer. What are women thankful for? the reporter asked me, What are they thinking about this year? We live in tricky times, true, but at Thanksgiving, I think women are thankful for the things theyre thankful for every year, the same things men are thankful for: family, friends, health, jobs, and a long weekend to enjoy the people we havent spent enough time with recently. But its not very satisfying to answer, Well, you know - same old, same old. Women are thankful for the same things as usual, same as men. For women, Thanksgiving is about the Thanks and the Giving. In search of an original insight, the question got me wondering whether theres anything different about Thanksgiving for women compared to men. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized there is: Thanksgiving is doubly meaningful for women, because for us, its not just about the Thanks but also about the Giving. At Thanksgiving, women call on themselves to give two of their most cherished - if often romanticized - labors of love: the warmth of good food, and the warm moments that memories are made of. The holiday tradition is to come together with family and friends, the more, the merrier. Its noisy. It can get complicated, and its a ton of work for the women of the tribe. Yet make no mistake - for the most part, were happy to do it, because thats what makes it wonderful. We feel its our job to make everything wonderful. Its our gift that we know how to do that. And its our gift to our families and friends that we really, really care about doing it well. Women are the family memory keepers, a term I learned when I worked with Kodak. They meant that women are the family photo collectors, the archivists and documentarians who capture key family moments, both momentous and mundane, and preserve them for posterity. These moments are so important that people often say theyd run back into a burning house to rescue just two things: their pets and their photo albums. But women see themselves as more than memory keepers - they want to be memory makers. They know that family bonds and the ties that bind lifelong friends together are created and strengthened by experiences; and that experiences are bound into the brain by deep emotion and the senses of smell, taste, touch, sight and sound. Thanksgiving has all the elements of a potentially perfect, memorable occasion. Its built on the ritual of a traditional holiday menu, and women work hard to give everyone an experience thats savory, fragrant, warm, comfortable and happy. At dinner-time, the table is piled high with comfort food, and its a point of pride to create the perfect holiday meal. Thanksgiving isnt easy, but for women, its worth it. Mind you, thats not easy to do. Every year Im amazed anew at how hard it is to orchestrate a fairly simple menu - the same one each year, so Ive had plenty of practice! - and deliver it to the table at that one exact instant when the turkey is carved yet still hot, the potatoes whipped and still fluffy, the rolls browned and not burnt, the stuffing steaming and not yet dried out. It takes days of coordination and preparation, hours of shopping and chopping, and a dawn-to-dinner timetable that moves a dozen dishes forward on parallel paths. Its not easy at all, but every year, millions of women give it their best because to women, the turkey dinner is more than just a meal. Its literally a labor of love, a work of heart - a gift of warmth, good food, family and friendship. We all give thanks. But in making Thanksgiving a day we all treasure, women give more. They give because they love the giving. They are thankful for the love in the room, and the noisy chaos, and even the mishaps that will make a funny story next year. What are women thankful for? All the same things as men, and then some. Because for us, its not just about the Thanks but also about the Giving. So in the words of Abigail Adams, the second First Lady of our great United States, Remember the Ladies.... originally posted at: trendsight/component/option,com_myblog/show,This-Thanksgiving-Remember-the-Ladies...-.html/Itemid,203/
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 20:07:02 +0000
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