THANKSGIVING 2025 -- HOW EMPATHY AND INTELLIGENCE CONQUERS EGO AND INSULT

For as long as I can recall, birthdays in my family were the only day of the year when it was perfectly acceptable (indeed, required) to focus solely on the one person for whom that day was historic.  

They got to pick their birthday dinner, their birthday cake and their birthday present.

And whoa unto anyone who violated that rule.  

One year on my sister's birthday, my father and I were sent out to buy her birthday cake.  He decided that she would like a lemon cake.  I kept telling him that was not what she wanted.  But I was very young (single digits) and he liked lemon cakes.

So . . . 

Lemon cake it was.

You would not have wanted to be him when we returned home with that cake.

My wife Debbie was born on November 27, 1965. 

Some years her birthday actually falls on Thanksgiving itself.  

In fact, this has happened eight times in her life. 

And will happen for the ninth time tomorrow. 

When the calendar is particularly cruel, it happens on milestone birthdays. 

Her tenth birthday in 1975 was on Thanksgiving. So was her 21st in 1986. Most of us get to close bars with our friends the day we are, as they say, legal. She had more stuffing.  Another milestone, her 60th, is tomorrow.  

And since many in her family never made it that far, this is a milestone on steroids.

But . . .

On the day meant to celebrate her personal triumph . . . 

Friends and family will be forced into celebrating . . .

The Pilgrim's.

What to do?

Could I conquer this veritable lemon cake of  a problem?

A friend of mine has a different family tradition.  

With him, everyone gets a birthday . . .

And a birthday aura. 

The first is a single day.  

The second begins anytime within the birthday week and lasts for two.

According to him, there's no reason you can't celebrate on all -- or any --  of those days.

So . . .

Last Saturday, I convinced Debbie that a lawyer from Los Angeles wanted to have dinner with us at West Point's Thayer Hotel. 

When we arrived, the lawyer was not there. 

But thirty of her friends were.  

Debbie Reilly McCarthy, who turns 60 tomorrow, was the legislative director for a ranking member of Congress; was indispensable to Generals and CEOs as she helped raise millions for a national "do tank" known as Business Executives for National Security; helped raise millions more for non-profits as diverse as New York's Westchester County Food Bank and its Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; walked a marathon to raise money for cancer research in honor of her best friend felled in her thirties by that disease; was a mother to two step-children whose lives would have been significantly more difficult without her; and saved the life of the guy who was the last opponent her Congressman-boss defeated. 

In an era of ego and insult, she is empathy and intelligence.

On Saturday, her friends came from across the country . . . 

And across the decades . . .

To surprise and celebrate her.

It was not tomorrow but it was in the aura.

Happy Birthday, my love.

And to everyone else . . .

Happy Thanksgiving.