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SHOULDN'T CELEBRATE ALONE  A traditional American Thanksgiving dinner scene with lots of people gathered around the dinner table. |
Open your doors and open
your hearts to others
of TheColumnists.com
Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I began to realize we might have to spend our 2009 Thanksgiving Day by ourselves. We both still remembered the only other time we spent this great American holiday on our own. It was awful!
Our nephew had died suddenly at the impossibly young age of 35. A special service was planned for him the day after Thanksgiving. We couldn't disappoint his grieving mother by not being there to support her and pay our final respects to a handsome young man we both loved dearly.
But we had only a day to try and arrange not only for a flight during one of the busiest weeks of the year, but for some place to take care of our ailing dog, a pit bull that couldn't be placed just anywhere. We realized we had no choice but to drive from our home right at the Canadian border in Washington to my sister-in-law's home in San Jose in northern California--and take the dog with us.
We found a motel in Oregon that would allow us to keep the dog in our room, but we'd have to drive all Thanksgiving Day to get there, then rise early the following morning for the long drive to San Jose.
Naturally, the weather was awful. Rain all the way to Oregon--and heavy traffic between Seattle and the Oregon border. We reached the Oregon motel long after dark. All the restaurants in town were closed except for the one next to the motel--a franchise burger joint that at least had a few tables indoors. So, I think we had a couple of anemic burgers, some greasy fries and a pair of milk shakes that didn't exactly taste like ambrosia.
But the dog seemed to enjoy it. We humans were in total agreement, though: That's our all-time worst Thanksgiving.
Both of us came from families that put on elaborate Thanksgiving celebrations. My mom and dad, my brother and I, an uncle and a grandmother were our basic family unit, but we often had another uncle, an aunt, some cousins and a couple more grandparents at some point in the day.
It seemed as though there was always some family member who was too infirm or old to travel, so our mom would make up a plate for him or her and deliver it before we started clearing the table. It also wasn't unusual for us to have some non-family person at the table, most often it would be a widow who'd just lost her husband and had no other relatives nearby.
My wife's family had an even bigger group. She has three sisters, so their families would show up along with her stepmother's parents. Her stepmother's sister and the cousins also would often be at the table.
My wife and I grew up in the beach town of Santa Cruz, California. Both our families lived there until my wife's parents moved to the adjacent community of Scott's Valley. When the two of us moved an hour's drive away to Santa Clara County, we began to have a holiday dilemma. Which set of parents would we visit at Thanksgiving?
The way we usually worked it out was practical. We would eat an early dinner with my parents, who usually served it around 1 P.M., then drop by her parents on our way out of town because they served around 5 P.M. Generally, we'd just have dessert with the second set of parents. We still groan when we remember the time our messages got mixed up somehow and we had to eat full dinners at both places within a three-hour period.
That's the time I believe we arrived home in the early evening and had Tums tablets for dessert.
Later on that problem was solved when a large number of my wife's relatives joined a religious group that doens't celebrate Thanksgiving. They, of course, didn't want to give up the turkey dinner and all the other stuff, so they simply had a non-Thanksgiving turkey dinner the following Saturday. That meant we got to have two monster dinners in the same week. What a thrill that was!
But in 2001 we moved to Washington state. At first we didn't suffer too badly at Thanksgiving because we still had a few stray sisters and nieces living nearby and we almost always hosted the Washington branch of the family at our place. Every now and then some of the other relatives would make a long journey to visit us at that time of year.
But this year we realized we were now entering the final phase of our lives--the one in which your parents, grandparents and most of the aunts and uncles are gone while the rest of the family is widely scattered over several states. We have one niece we could count on, but her man came down with the flu, so we all decided to have a post-Thanksgiving dinner with them when he's recovered. A sister we often visited--the one who lived in San Jose--had moved further south to Fresno and this year was deeply involved in a community project that had her tied up with obligations.
So, we decided to reach out to a young couple we know in our neck of the woods. They live far from their families and had just bought a new home. But then we learned they had guests coming for Thanksgiving and were busily trying to get the new place ready for them.
Then we received a surprise invitation to spend Thanksgiving with a family in the small Dutch community of Lynden, which is only about half an hour away from us. The invitation came from a 22-year-old friend of ours who had just moved into her own apartment a year or so ago and still celebrated Thanksgiving with her parents. She was bringing her boy friend and wanted to know if we "had plans." Well, gosh, turns out we didn't.
We know this is going to be a great holiday for us because we know our friend's mother and father and her boy friend and like them very much. We'll be meeting our friend's aunt and her family for the first time, but we know the family we're joining for the day is a warm and loving family, so we know we won't feel like "outsiders."
We also had to smile at each other when our friend told us she hoped we wouldn't mind, but she would have to leave around 4 P.M. because she has to go with her boy friend to the Thanksgiving dinner his family is hosting later in the day. A-hah! Deja vu all over again.
My wife and I grew up believing that Thanksgiving is the ideal family holiday, but that it's also a time to extend the borders of your family to take in friends and neighbors who might otherwise spend the day alone. Our families did it frequently and now we're going to join another family that has always done it with the same giving spirit.
And the good part is we're not going to spend the day alone, but with people who share the same love of a great American holiday.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 23, 2009.
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