On Thanksgiving and thanks giving (vol. xxix, no. 11)

Dear Family,

It has come to my attention that my monthly letters feature an inordinate amount of complaining, mostly about petty and trivial matters. Some of these complaints are sincere and heartfelt; others I play up for comic effect. I honestly couldn’t tell you how much of my whining falls into each category. But I’ve discovered something curious about complaints that start as jokes: they rarely stay that way — what begin as lighthearted gripes often grow into something more corrosive.

That’s how things seem to work in my brain, anyway.

It’s probably telling that whenever I think of Jeffrey R. Holland — almost certainly among the most insightful people I’ve ever met — the line of his that always comes to mind first is “no misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse.” It’s undoubtedly not the most insightful or important thing he’s ever said, but it resonates with me (I assume) because of my proclivity toward bellyaching.

Anyway, I know myself well enough to recognize that there’s no point in trying to swear off grievance airing altogether. But I think I can set it aside for a month. Or at least for as long as it takes me to write one letter. After that, we’ll see.

And so, in honor of Thanksgiving and the dawning holiday season, I choose to make this letter a list of things (and people, mostly people) for which I am grateful.

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I am thankful for major seventh chords. You seldom hear them at church — not at our church, at least, unless I’m playing. Some people think they’re too jazzy for our flavor of worship. I am not one of those people. (And I have a feeling that most people who think major sevenths are incompatible with sacrament meeting probably couldn’t tell you what a major seventh is. They just recognize it as something you’d expect to hear in a piano bar. And I suppose they’re right.)

Not everyone likes the way I play at church, but for those who do and wonder why, it’s likely because I toss in a bunch of major seventh chords (probably more than I should).¹

I lack the musical vocabulary to explain why I like major sevenths so much, and so I asked ChatGPT. (My precise prompt was “Why do I like major seventh chords so much?”) True to form, the AI had a lot to say on the matter, some of it nonsense. But here are some brief excerpts that resonated with me:

“You get … dissonance [that] isn’t jarring—it’s lush and shimmering.”

“Emotionally, they tend to feel lush, dreamy, nostalgic … calm but sophisticated. It’s a clean kind of dissonance — like longing without sadness.”

And finally, my favorite:

“It’s like smiling while raising an eyebrow.”

That last one is right on the nose. Major sevenths warm my heart. They literally make me smile.

I am thankful for every woman I’ve ever worked for (and most of the men). I have spent virtually my entire career at the intersection of finance and tech — two historically male-dominated industries — but my bosses have been almost exclusively women. Without exception, they have been extraordinarily good and kind to me.

I have actually spent most of my career working for the same woman (technically at four different companies, though mostly at one). She is not aware of this public monthly letter-writing habit of mine and (unless someone forwards her a link, which does not seem likely — my personal and professional worlds don’t overlap much) will never read this. But she has achieved legend status in my household. I started working for her at KPMG around the turn of the century. I was living the typical young consultant life — leaving home on Monday morning, spending 3 or 4 nights in a hotel somewhere, and seeing my family only on weekends.

Then, when Sophie was born in 2002, she (my boss) decided that this was no way for a father of three young children to live, and so she arranged to get me assigned to pretty much only local projects. Crystal has viewed her as something as a guardian angel for me ever since.

She’s kind of the perfect boss. She has high standards and expects results but is never a jerk about it. She has strong opinions but invites dissent. She’s an outspoken believer in mentorship and practices what she preaches. She encourages us to take risks and not be afraid to fail. She takes a genuine interest in both the professional and personal development of those who work for her. Other women (and some of the men) I’ve worked for (however briefly) have also treated me this way.

Maybe everyone’s been blessed to have bosses like that, but I doubt it, and I feel fortunate.

I am thankful for the women who have enabled me to have a mostly happy career (so far).

I am thankful for chicken noodle soup. What brings this to mind is a recent series of news stories about a fired Campbell Soup Company executive who was caught on tape saying disparaging things about the company’s chicken noodle soup and the people who eat it. I probably would not have paid so much attention to the story were I not the son of a retired Campbell Soup Company executive and someone who grew up in a house with enough Campbell’s soup in the basement to feed a small town.

But whatever the reason, chicken noodle soup (be it Campbell’s or anyone else’s) is one of life’s simple pleasures. I don’t eat it very often, but I’m always happy when I do. If all the sodium and ultra-processing is shortening my lifespan, then so be it.

I’m thankful for special education teachers. And not just because Crystal is one, though her being one has afforded me insights I never would have otherwise had. My appreciation for special education teachers began shortly after Ari began middle school. The whole story is way too long to tell here, but the short answer is that, in my estimation, special education teachers (along with the immense, supporting infrastructure of Montgomery County Public Schools, including the tireless teams of mental health professionals that MCPS and the state of Maryland provided at no cost to us) probably saved Ari’s life.

Our first-hand experience with the good that special education teachers do is a large part of the reason Crystal decided to become one herself. I’m not sure she fully appreciated what she was getting herself into. I’m sure I didn’t. Her workload is crazy. In addition to having to prepare separate lessons every evening for her sixth grade English class, her seventh grade English class, and her social skills class, she is frequently up until long after I’m in bed working on various students’ individualized education plan documents.

The kids drive her a little nuts sometimes, but she has genuine affection for them. Sometimes she’ll wonder aloud about moving to more conventional teaching position. Maybe she will, but I’ll be surprised if she can pull herself away from a place where she is so desperately needed.

If I’ve learned anything from watching Crystal work (and watching Sophie and Grace go through student teaching) it’s that teaching is a lot harder than it looks. I am thankful for the people who choose to do it.

I am thankful for my temple shift coordinator. I recently learned that every Trader Joe’s operates under the same basic management structure. In keeping with their nautical theme, every store has a “Captain” (the manager) a “First Mate” (the assistant manager) and a team of employees who are fully trained to do any job in the store. There are no full-time cashiers or stockers or cart-wranglers or whatever. Everybody takes turns doing everything, as needed.

Working at the Washington D.C. Temple is a little like working at Trader Joe’s (except with better parking). Apart from the sealers (who live off in their own little world up on the sixth floor — we seldom see them), we have a shift coordinator (the manager) and a couple of assistants, and the rest of us do whatever the shift coordinator assigns us to do. From week to week, I never know whether I’ll be officiating an endowment session, performing initiatory ordinances, standing at the veil, sitting at the recommend desk, working in the baptistry … or folding bras down in the laundry.

(I don’t get assigned to the laundry very often. There is a particular way in which the professionals down there like specific articles of clothing to be folded and hung, and I’m pretty sure I never do it exactly right.)

There are no temple assignments that I dislike, but I love some more than others. I generally keep my preferences to myself (I’ll tell you privately if you ask — consider it a perk for being willing to read this far).

But one of the few people who knows my preferences is my new shift coordinator. I made a point of not revealing my preferences to past shift coordinators (they have a really hard job making sure all the areas are staffed and I didn’t want to add to that burden by giving them the false impression that I’d be disappointed by certain assignments).

But my new shift coordinator is my friend Aaron. Aaron and I were random roommates at Deseret Towers (W Hall) when we were both BYU freshmen 35 years ago. By the most cosmic of coincidences, we discovered a couple of years ago that not only were we on the same temple shift, but that we worked 7 floors apart in the same Arlington, Va., office building.

I shared my temple preferences with Aaron before he became my shift coordinator — back when we would talk about all sorts of random stuff. (It may have been over lunch in Arlington, which we sometimes do.) When he was asked to serve as coordinator a couple of months ago, he took the knowledge of my preferences with him and, as a result, I now find myself doing my favorite temple things pretty much every week. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about it.

And so I am thankful for Aaron (and his wife — also a shift coordinator) and all the other temple shift coordinators, including Mom, who used to be one, but thankfully not anymore. It’s difficult, stressful duty that makes temple work a lot more pleasant for the rest of us.

Thanksgiving

I hope it goes without saying that I am grateful for my family. My parents, departed grandparents, Crystal, my children, their spouses, my brothers, their spouses, my aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, in-laws. I honestly can’t think of a single one of them not only that I don’t love, but that I don’t genuinely like. What are the odds of that?

Not one of them would I not want to show up for Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe it’s just a meme, but the internet would have me believe that every family has some nutty uncle with unconventional political views that no one wants to have to spend time with. In our family, I honestly have no idea who that would be. (I suppose it’s possible that I am that uncle. But if so, then everyone’s doing a great job of making me feel, welcome, loved and included despite all that.)

Thanksgiving dinner this year was 25 people: Mom, Dad, and Pete; Aunt Coco; Crystal, Ari, Grace, and me; Matt, Andra, Jackie and Henry; Grant, Jen, Abby, and Jake; Richard, JoAnn, Trey, Hart, and Ajay Henrichsen; Lyndee and Genevieve Henrichsen; and (I guess because we still had empty chairs to fill) two sister missionaries whose names I have already forgotten — one from Syracuse, New York, and the other from Mona, Utah.² (Andrew’s family was in Cape May for Thanksgiving with the Walkers; Sophie and Luke traveled to Coeur d’Alene for Thanksgiving with the Kents; and I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t know where Hannah and Emma went — I’m assuming they ate with the Porters.) The rest of us somehow fit around one long line of tables that ran the length of Grant and Jen’s dining room.

I am thankful for all of these people.

Yesterday (black Friday) began with a 9:00 showing of Wicked: For Good in Downtown Silver Spring with most of the Thanksgiving dinner attendees (not the missionaries). I am thankful that they somehow managed to keep it under two and a half hours. I am not thankful for the two new songs, which were forgettable and served only to make the film longer than it needed to be. (Not complaining, just pointing it out.) Still, I probably cried for 75% of it. Like any good red-blooded American, I’ve basically had the entire musical score memorized for at least 15 years — it’s been played on our living room piano so many times, I imagine the notes that feature in Wicked songs have strings that are more worn out than the others.)

On Friday afternoon, my four brothers and I (and two of my nephews) took on the new disc golf course the county just put in next to the Trolley Museum — basically in my brothers’ neighborhood. We could have walked there. (We didn’t, but we could have. — I mean, I guess I could technically walk there by walking out my back gate and heading 5 or 6 miles north on the Northwest Branch Trail (which runs behind my house.)

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I am almost as bad at disc golf as I am at real golf, but we still had a lot of fun.

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After disc golf, we went back to Grant’s house and watched the Eagles lose to the Bears. I am thankful for the Eagles’ defense and hope one day to be thankful again for their offense.

It’s now Saturday morning. I need to get ready for my temple shift. When that ends at 5:00, I’ll head over to the church where I’m playing in the band at tonight’s “barn dance.”

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Then, tomorrow night I’m part of a quartet that’s singing the prelude for the annual devotional for temple workers (up on the 7th floor — the acoustics in that large, unusual room are better than you might think).

Then, Crystal and I are singing in four Christmas performances next week and three the week after. Bear in mind that if you come to our visitors’ center concert, you’ll need to go online beforehand for a (free) time-entry parking pass. Apparently, the attendance at last year’s Festival of Lights made it such that the the people living in the neighborhood had to fight through hours of traffic just to get home. They were understandably and decidedly not thankful for that.

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So anyway, I’m late and need to get moving.

Happy Holidays!

Love,
Tim

1. You also might like listening to me if you happen to be a fan of organists who overuse augmented fifths (i.e., “sharp fives”), diminished chords, and ii-V-I and ii-IV-I progressions. Any serious musician who sits and listens to me improvise sacrament meeting prelude will quickly recognize that I come back to these with annoying and unimaginative frequency. Sometimes I try other things, but I’m admittedly not very good at it. I take chances that don’t always work out, but it’s exhilarating when they do, and people at church are too nice to tell you when they don’t. If I can somehow hold onto my current church jobs for another decade, I think I could figure out how to do it pretty well.
2. Where is Mona, Utah, you ask? Well, I had to look it up and so you’re going to have to also. The missionary described it as “about an hour south of Salt Lake.” Having looked it up, all I can say in response to that description is that she must be a very fast driver.