Thanksgiving ... with feeling

Here's a question in honor of a holiday. It was posed to me last week and it seems an appropriate time to answer. "What do we give when we give thanks?"

Our English language makes this question difficult, because we are unaccustomed to thinking about giving if we can't point to the gift. We're a language of absolutes and a language nouns.

I think of some of the Spanish that has remained in my head and I see how much easier this question might be in another language. "Tienes suerte" means "Good luck" but it's literal translation would be "Have luck." Same with "Tengo hambre" (I have hunger). This kind of linguistics makes the abstract (hunger and luck) more concrete.

But we're speaking English, so let's answer this in English.

Thanksgiving, if anything, is a gift of time. Giving thanks to me represents the time we will use from our sip of life and give to another. A handwritten card is more valued than a typed e-mail because it took more time. Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow will be important because we have carved out a window to give our time to those who are important to us.

A phone call to a friend to say "Thank you" for Mariners tickets is a gift of time. And a prayer before dinner tomorrow is a gift of time, and it is that time--in fact an entire day--that we give when we give Thanksgiving.