Dear Joan, I wish you and Nora all the best. My eight year old is a mere decade away from this event. I perish the thought for now. I'm sure she will be well versed and ready for the world.

It's not sappy it's from the heart and genuine.

Happy Holidays,
Greg

Have a wonderful happy sappy Thanksgiving Joan and Nora! Thanks for Open Salon and all the joy it brings to me day in and day out. It's a great place to go to without ever having to leave the house. God Bless!

As a single mom I know how hard it is to see them leave the nest. But Nora will always be your daughter and you will find great joy in every phase to come. In many ways it gets even better.

And may I say, we are grateful to you for making OS possible.

The first Thanksgiving when they come home. Nothing like it. All the sappy stuff comes to life and you walk on air till you see that face walking towards you. Enjoy Joan. Nothing like it.
Sappy is what the heck we live for.

Happy Thanksgiving!

been there. cried for a month. not anymore all these years later. just grateful when they all return home for a short bit.

however, I am eternally grateful that lulu and phoebe will never leave home, never want cell phones, or roll their eyes. all they wish for are treats. lots of them.

happy turkey day to everyone. and too bad Jan 20th does not come after November 27th.

um, I meant to write.....

too bad that jan 20th does not come immediately after nov. 27th, as in the next day.

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for something I didn't have last Thanksgiving -- this place. Thank you for somehow finding the time and energy to do you part in giving us this playground.

you'll have a wonderful love-filled Thanksgiving Joan...

and thanks to you, Kerry, Thomas, James and the whole crew...my thanksgiving indeed for this place that is my online home.

giving thanks for lovely people and great friends.

Have a lovely time Joan.

Joan, I'm thrilled for you that Nora is coming home. My daughters flew in today. It is the best. 3000 miles is a distance not envied by many a mother. You show your love for Nora by letting her fly. Now she's returning (and maybe she'll transfer :)). Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy this time together Joan. It is one of the phases of parenthood that is touching for it is near the end of sharing your child. Soon she will with the grace of good fortune be returning home for Thanksgiving like my daughter, who I raised as a single father, with a husband and two wonderful grandsons who have filled that void created by a child having grown.

Have a wonderful holiday and thank you for all the effort you make to help us understand why this world works as it does.

With two sons, 3 and 2, we’ve still got them for a while. But if having them leave for college is a just a bigger version of what we went through sending our oldest to pre-school (for us, not him), then we’re in trouble!

I’m new around here, so this is a good time to say thanks for providing this community. It’s wonderful.

Thanks for OS and your support of our efforts here. Thanks for our families, our friends and our lives. Thanks that we have a President Elect that has the courage and intelligence to move this country out of the economic mess and into a new day for America.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, Joan.

Eat as much as you want, we all intend to diet again starting next Monday!

Monte

Joan, enjoy.

I was in the business of sending them away for their first Thanksgiving from college for so long; and for so long they really, really wanted to get back. The rolling eyes and 'tsks' were mine now, so you won't get much of that anymore. You'll have a great time.

All the best Joan!
Have a great Holiday!

Joan,
I'd like to say thank you for OS. What a great thing this community has done for me. I too have a recent empty nest and OS has helped fill some of the void. It's nice to converse with good people and to know that I am being heard on some pretty big topics. I would be remiss if I didn't say thanks for all the smiles and laughter OS bloggers bring into my humble home.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and to all of my new OS friends. May you all take time for gratitude.

Thank you for this amazing environment for all of us to play in! Best wishes to you Joan, and your daughter, for a very warm and sappy gobble! Happy Thanksgiving! :)

Joan, Thanksgiving is all about ‘sappy’! It is the one time a year that the nation, families and least of all mothers give thanks for all the many blessings that have been stowed upon them. It’s a time, when we all look back on the memories of old… a loving great aunt or a child’s gift of a finger turkey drawing. It’s a time to be with family & friends!

Continue to make memories with your daughter and enjoy the ones of old… Happy Giving Day!

Sappy rules!

Boy, don't you just swell up with love for them when they come home for that first Thanksgiving? It is a really special time because this is the transition, the place where you are still connected as parent and child but you are easing toward parent and ADULT child and believe me, that is a real difference.

Not an unhappy one, though. It is just another transformation, like all the ones you remember throughout their lives. They began to walk and you lost and gained something. So it is as they begin to walk their adult path. You can't protect and care for them as you did when they were so dependent, but you can marvel at the person they become and take pleasure in their (adult) company.

At the end of the day, in the stillness of night while we're waiting to fall asleep, it's just us-- and our thoughts. That's where sappy comes from-- that we've been conditioned to be "embarrassed" by the raw truths we face in the dark, and the little prayers of thanks we mumble alongside the whispered hopes for an even better morning. But I think those are all part of our essential goodness... ! I'll be right there too, and sometimes I even recall what Joan Crawford claimed to say each dawn: "Thank you. God, for this lovely day. What can I contribute to it?" Me quoting Joan Crawford? Now THAT'S sappy !
Happy Thanksgiving !!

Happy Thanksgiving. I'm so grateful for you and the OS staff -- OS has been such a great experience, and your encouragement of my writing is amazing and so appreciated! I hope your daughter is doing well and that my experiences have not discouraged her!

Joan, Must have been thinking of you when wrote this on my site:MOI will forever treasure the folks who have come into life, from what ever quarter, they have added the spice to it, and made MOI more the richer for having been a part of. What a dull life it would be if we could not be 'sappy' with folks we call 'friend' Ta, new 'friend' may you have a happy holiday. Rob

Joan,

I wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving ---the joy of being together---the best for the entire holiday season---this year, truly a season of glorious hope.

I'm with Tom Cordle on this one: Among my most "thankful for's," of prominent importance is this gift called Open Salon. You, Kerry, the staff that I have yet to learn the names of, and the incredible, supportive community of fellow writers have given me something I thought was lost to me forever when I gave up writing ( and was no longer working).

It is the comradery: the ability to share a quip, a joke. It is getting to know people so well through their writing, that just a word or two exchanged conveys full meaning. It is engaging in discussions that exercise the mind, force it to expand, open it to growth.

But I babble: that seems to be what happens when I think about how much this site means to me.

P.S. I am also thankfull for the rain that is making Southern CA feel like Thanksgiving. YEA!

So I will raise my glass in a toast to you, Joan, and this community that you have spawned.

I'm spending Thanksgiving by myself this year for the first time in my life, and only regret that I didn't have the guts to tell all the friends who invited me their place the truth. I'll have plenty of memories to keep me company--and nobody will be competing for the wings.

I'm sure you and Nora will have a great time with all her stories from her first semester.

I am about to hop in the car and drive the 3 hours back to Baltimore for T-day myself. The things we do for family, I guess we are all saps.

Sappy is good, Joan. This holiday is the best excuse for expending all the sappiness that wells up inside us for months! Already anticipating all the sappy stuff that will be stated around the table come Thursday, when we traditionally take turns sharing all that we are thankful for in life. That's true sappiness! Good stuff.

As I look though the comments here I see familiar faces, some I've met a time or two and quite I few I never knew but will now investigate. Right here on your post is a microcosm of what you've created with Open Salon.

If you remember, I told you and OS about my empty nest and the first Thanksgiving my nestling came home. That visit, even after it was over, gave me my center back. I hope you never lost yours, but even if it rocked a little, I wish the same for you -- that this holiday will put you firmly on solid ground.

We're all grateful for the hard work you, Kerry and Thomas put in to give us this very special space. Nothing sappy about appreciation from The Empress. ;) And it's very mutual.

So, is anyone else looking forward to watching that drunk uncle chase your high-school-aged cousins around grandpa's kitchen with a turkey baster?

I aint.

(I'm just saying.)

Here's to Turkey Day, the one holiday where no one gives two shakes if you gain five pounds.

~ D.

Happy Thanksgiving! I can remember my own first trip home after college. Your daughter will be so happy to see you.

Oh, don't get all sappy. Sentimentality is just foolishness. It's all...just, um...you know.....

:: sniff::

Here's "sappy" right back at you, Joan. I just want to say thank you to you, Kerry and Thomas (and any other staff that there may be) for this unique community that you've created and for inviting all of us to come and play. From the moment that I clicked on that little blue S icon while on Salon, to hearing the voice in my head telling me to JOIN NOW, this has been such a life-altering experience for me. Open Salon has inspired me to write again on a regular basis and has even provided a built-in audience. I'm able to hang out with smart, funny, creative, like-minded people whom I've come to adore. What can be better than that?

I can't thank you enough for your vision. I'll always do my very best to contribute to this community in a positive way. Thank you for giving me something so wonderful for which to be thankful this year.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Thank you very much; lovely sentiments....
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I can identify. My James is home for his second Thanksgiving since starting college. Ten days of joyous togetherness.

Enjoy your daughter, your family, your holiday, and please post your avatar photo for our poster and tag it "os collage" or send a message to The Bionic Man if you'd prefer to e-mail him a photo. It wouldn't be OS without you!

It isn't sappy if it's real. My two older boys are home for Thanksgiving too, and I can't get over these two young men. I watch with amazement as one vacuums and the other cooks -- Yes, that really did happen today! It takes courage for parents to let their children enter the world. To watch as their mistakes and successes, struggles and discoveries expand their experience and ours.
Thanks so much for OS. It has been a wonderful adventure for me both as a writer and as a reader. I hope it has also been a fulfilling adventure for you.

I couldn't let the whole thing get by without stopping in to get sap happy with you, Joan. I echo the gratitude others have mentioned for the opportunity use this time, this place however we see fit. Open Salon has been an inspiration and a refuge for me in a challenging time. Grazie mille.

Thank YOU.

Joan,

Sorry 'bout coming in late........I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful, all the best to you, and we are all exceedingly grateful to you, Thomas and Kerry. The courage and hard work you guys show is a real inspiration.

BTW, thanks also for tolerating my Thank you notes!

Dear Joan:
Just joined Open Salon today, was nice to see your friendly face as a friend. I was feeling sorry for myself on T-Day. My three step-children, and the two grand-children I have yet to meet were all travelling over the rive and trough the woods to see thier Nazi Mom. (See Chicken Chow Mein in the Promised Land) My twenty-year old son was depressed because his sister was spending the holiday with her boyfriend in SF, and my husband decided to sleep the Holiday away because he is mentally ill (PTSD). So I pulled my self up, dusted myself off, and decided, I am going to cook a great dinner even if it's only for my son, me and the dog.

As it turned out. My husband woke up at 6 pm. My son had four friends over, and I had cooked enough for an army. All of us sat down in our kitchen, a motley crew at best, and ate a wonderful meal. It was no the meal, it was the unexpected company of youth, in all their splendour. We talked of everything and nothing. All glowed under candlelight, and I was thankful for the dew that rests on the still childlike smiles of the young.

I trust you will have a great Christmas. Invite the unexpected.

Joan, Those were very kind sentiments about those of us on OS. It has become my solace and at times saving grace. All this is due to you. I thank you.
Donna Auxter

thanks joan walsh for all your hard work during the election. my excitement about this historic election would not have been so great without all the coverage & the debate on salon/os...

Dear Joan,

It's tough watching them grow up. My daughter is 16 and has started driving. I never thought I would see the day. To me she will always be four years old. Not sappy at all. I think all of us go through this phase, but we will be repaid someday, God willing, with grandchildren. I tell my daughter that the first one is mine and she can keep the rest.

Happy Holidays and Memories,
Zumi

You're right. This is sappy.

Lame, too.

I hope you had a great Holiday weekend Joan. Great job on "Hardball". You made us proud, once again...

Thanks for Open Salon. I finally found my spot!

Hello Joan,

Thank you for leading with compassion and humanity. Happy Holidays.

Joan, I'm new to salon.com and I'm so glad I'm here. Thanks for this great forum. And good luck with a child in college. Mine are still in elementary school but man, it's going fast.

No - thank YOU!
I signed up a day or two post-Thanksgiving, but wanted to say happy turkey day to you even if it's belated. I'm looking forward to getting to know the Open Salon family.

Buried my nose in Salon till after the election when I figured I needed a break from news. Had scanned OS a few times. Now I have to drag myself away from it. So cool to read about other people's real lives. It's endlessly fascinating. Thank you.