It has been 47 years now since I sat at a Thanksgiving table and ingested turkey. I spent my earliest Thanksgivings in that blind reverie, packing away pieces of the stuffed bird, watching parades and football games, zoning out on tryptophan. It is still a special day, even without imbibing the Meleagris gallopavo, and I still have a lot to be thankful for.

There is a myth that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird. He didn’t. But he did defend the honor of the turkey in a letter to his daughter that he wrote after being disappointed with the bald eagle on America’s great seal.

Franklin wrote that in comparison to the bald eagle, the turkey is “a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America…He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage.”

I am more thankful than ever for the gifts my family and friends have given me solely by their existence. And I am hopeful that the courage Franklin admired in our silly bird will be exercised in defense of democracy in the election that stands between us and our next Thanksgiving.