Dear friend
Since Mexico seems short of holidays I decided long ago to adopt another Holiday for my calendar. I adopted the American Thanksgiving. I won’t be able to eat turkey or stuffing. I’m going to have to work all day and I won’t be able to be around my loved ones. But I will be grateful and I will say a prayer.

As a young boy growing up in the United States my mother made sure we followed all of the Mexican traditions, but she really never paid much attention to the American ones. With the exception of Thanksgiving. Of course we made sure she didn’t forget Halloween!

She believed Thanksgiving did not have to be exclusive to the United States but should be followed by everyone. She felt it was important to be grateful and to take a moment in life to express it. My mother believed she was very blessed and for this she was thankful.

The tradition kind of got lost in my family over the years we have been living here, but when I was old enough to understand the meaning of Thanksgiving, I adopted the holiday and every year I take the time on this day to thank god for everything he has blessed me with.

I have a lot to be thankful for, but this year I have one more thing to add to my list. This year I met you and I am very thankful for it .

You have provided for my Family, and for the families of my men. You have been kind and offered us the warmth of your home. But above all you made us feel proud of who we are and what we do.

For this I thank you and I pray for you on this day.

Be you American or not, a Happy Thanksgiving to you!!!

Jorge

Needless to say, I am so glad that I did because this interview with Sr Jorge Sosa was FABULOUS! His thoughtful and palpably caring responses to your interview questions literally brought tears to my eyes. Perhaps that is because the time has long since passed when I could declare myself to be monocultural and I share many of Sr Sosa’s assessments about the US, Mexico, and life.

I was impressed and moved by his ability to get at the crux of the deeply felt concerns that his parents had concerning the over-arching issue of the value system that would ultimately be communicated to their children in any given geographical location, above and beyond the commercial and financial. His innate sense of fair play and empathy came through loud and clear.

I was especially impressed with his observation that his 4 year old son would have much more fun in life being multi- rather than monolingual. I was also reminded of this interview with Yo Yo Ma as I was reading Sr. Sosa’s:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87960790

I believe in and love ideals represented by the Constitution of the United States of America, the Bill of Rights, the principles of freedom of individuals and information, the awe-inspiring beauty of its natural resources, and the potential of its citizenry and their common idiom of American English.

I also love the powerful beauty of the land of Mexico from north to south and east to west, its enduring, resourceful, warm, magnanimous, gracious, proud, family-oriented, artistic, genuinely good-humored people, and their musical Spanish language.

I further love the language of the French, their irascibility, and the natural beauty of l’Hexagone, not to mention the food, wine, and cheese.

How and where can one stop learning about, admiring, and appreciating the unique gifts and adaptations of human beings in each circumstance in which they find themselves coping with the challenges and triumphs of life in any given outpost on our shared planet Earth?

Bravo, Working Gringos! Bravo, Sr Jorge Sosa!