I slid my hand out from under my father’s and patted him back. “Sarah. And if you need any help remembering my name that won’t take more than a minute or two, feel free to give me a holler.”

Eventually my family decided to pick on somebody else, as they almost always did if you waited long enough. I took a moment to wonder when my own particular version of the luck o’ the Irish had morphed into a bad case of Murphy’s Law. I’d probably be stuck hosting Thanksgiving dinner until Hell froze over. Or at least until I managed to come up with a genius escape strategy.

Until then, survival was my goal.

Time flew, like calendar pages in an old movie, and suddenly it was the day before Thanksgiving.

Back in 1978, President Jimmy Carter had officially proclaimed the second Sunday of September Grandparents Day. Celebrating the importance of grandparents in our lives was a terrific gesture, but beyond providing diehard Hallmark card fans with another trip to the store and the mailbox, it never really took off.

So Bayberry Preschool kept the sentiment and changed the date to make it work with our school calendar, something preschool teachers probably would have suggested way back when if anybody at the White House had thought to consult them.

Today, the half-day before Thanksgiving, was now Grandparents Day at Bayberry. This was Bayberry’s sweet and memorable way of honoring the kids’ doting grandparents, many of whom traveled far and wide to celebrate Thanksgiving with their adorable grandchildren.

Slightly more calculating was the fact that a few hours of oohing and awwing over the grandparents often resulted in some serious donations for the school.

As the grandparents arrived, cute turkey stick-on nametags would be distributed. Email and snail mail addresses would be collected. Once the next day’s turkey dinners had been digested and the grandparents were home again, a letter would arrive from Kate Stone, Bayberry’s founding director, aka our bitch of a boss. Wouldn’t it be lovely if your grandchildren could learn to read their grandparents’ names engraved on a special brick on the new entry courtyard? On an engraved plaque on a dismissal bench? Or why not donate a piece of playground equipment so your precious grandchild could not only read your name but also think of you every time s/he took a spin around the safety-first jungle gym? A giving pyramid designed by the fundraising committee, printed in full color on heavy paper stock, was tucked in with the letter.