Friday Night Gratitude

Mark Zitter

I’m grateful for Friday night, the best, loudest, most social, most delicious night of the week, the only night I know we’ll all be together, not watching TV or huddling in front of a computer screen but singing and talking and eating and laughing, like when I was growing up but even better, because now, I’m the host and it’s not just family but friends too; I’m always home from work in time for dinner and we always have friends over, not just grownups but families with kids for our kids to play with, cause it’s Shabbat, the start of the Jewish Sabbath, pretty much the most important holiday in our religion and it comes every week, and even if we aren’t the most observant Jews around, we celebrate Shabbat religiously, every Friday, usually at our house and sometimes at some other family’s house, and we have great food, which Jessica or our sitter makes, and we have very good wine, which is my department, and after we light candles, sing Shalom Alechem, and say a couple of prayers – all thanking God for various things – I say an individual blessing for each of my children, Solomon, Tessa, and Sasha, putting my hands on their head and connecting with them and focusing on them and wishing them, willing them, the very best life always, and I sit next to Jessica on one side and some guest on the other, with all the kids at the far end of our large oak table, begging for a second or third piece of challah before the rest of the feast is served, and then comes my favorite part, a practice that I started when the kids were little, after I read a book about happiness, where we go around the table, starting with the youngest, and everyone talks about what they’re grateful for this week, anything at all, and the kids begin with something silly but eventually get to stuff that they care about, maybe something in school or sports or music, and usually they’re polite enough to say they’re thankful for the guests too, which is touching, but they always finish by appreciating their family, and they mean it, and I always say how grateful I am for Jessica, and I mean that too, and often I have to hold back tears because I’m so moved, and then we eat and talk about our passions or parents or problems or dreams, stuff that really matters, and by the time we’re finished with the meal and the wine and the singing and the jokes, and the kids have all run outside to bounce on the trampoline and then come running back in for dessert, and our stomachs and hearts are bursting, I say to myself, “Life doesn’t get any better than this,” and I don’t want it to end, ever, and I know it won’t, because we’ll all be together to do it again next Friday night, thank God.