Commentaries : Passage of Time Unveils the True Joys of Thanksgiving : Holiday: A teacher learns the day is special because families are together, making memories.
Thanksgiving is going to be different for me this year. At the age of 41, circumstances in my life are compelling me to re-evaluate the family memories of a holiday I have dutifully organized for the last 19 years. Although my family enjoyed our personal celebrations, I had always felt that something was lacking, that somehow we were just not doing Thanksgiving right. I now suspect that we were doing it right all along, and that I was simply wrong not to have realized it.
Over the years, I had polished a careful image of how I thought a traditional American family should spend Thanksgiving Day. I had fashioned lofty ideals, ignoring the reality between vision and possibility. The success of the celebration would be judged by the fulfillment of my hopes. The family would fail by achieving less.
We would be an especially loving unit, sharing our snippets of daily life without fear of criticism from other members. There would be familial validation of our personal journeys, and support for the unforeseen detours that had distracted us along the way.
We would be respectful of our different generations, golden threads weaving our family’s past to its unknown future. A hereditary continuum, that deserved our patience.
I sought a deeper harmony within my family, one that would surmount the entanglements of our usual conflicts in order to achieve a day’s tolerance. No stress or tension, because that was not how it was supposed to be.
To do Thanksgiving right, we had to be different. We could not be the family we were the rest of the year.
Since 1974 when my husband and I moved to San Diego, the holiday dinners have usually been at our home. Nana and Grandpa, my maternal grandparents, joined us, along with my parents. My sister Becky and my brother Rusty also were with us, in addition to our two children.
We came together to celebrate in laughter and in love. But with us also came our flaws.
For instance, Nana would criticize Mom for not going to church, or for losing contact with childhood friends. She would repeat rambling stories about distant relatives, and be hurt when others would start conversations around her.
Throughout the day, we would have to shout at Nana to turn on her hearing aid.
Mom would insist that Nana use her cane because of her dizzy spells. Nana would stubbornly cling to her delusions of agility, disputing the undeniable evidence of her aging.
Needing frequent cigarette breaks, Mom would sulk because I made her smoke outside. She also complained that I always made too much food.
Grandpa would ask Rusty if he had found the perfect girl yet. He and Nana didn’t know Rusty was gay, and none of us felt it would be wise to tell them. Since Rusty could not share his life with his family, he always had to be on guard during conversational meanderings. So did we.
In earlier years, the kids would cry because Thanksgiving dinner upset their schedules and they needed naps. Their fussiness drove us all crazy, but mostly me, who wanted perfect children for a day.
As they grew older, the kids would get bored and seek the respite of Nintendo. I would force them back out to be reluctant participants at our family gathering.
Dad would flee to the boundaries of our property and overlook the canyon, escaping the mounting tensions. He was always uneasy with too much family togetherness.
I would tersely blame my husband for everything, unfairly creating a scapegoat for events outside of his control. I would be exhausted trying to juggle the roles of wife, mother, daughter, granddaughter, and sister.
Becky and Rusty would lend their support, but a perfect Thanksgiving by then was beyond my grasp.
We were a family, and a normal one. Our imperfections formed the bonds of our relationships, as much as our love did. The moments of joyfulness and laughter, however, would always prevail before we scattered back to our regular lives.
I had faulted my family for being only what it knew how to be, simply a family. Now that some of us are gone, I realize all that we actually had.
Becky moved to Oregon five years ago and is happily married. It is not often we get to see her, maybe once every two years, but we remain very close.
After his longtime companion died from AIDS in 1988, Rusty moved from San Diego to Seattle. He visits once a year, but never for the holidays. He has forged a new life, and we miss him terribly.
Since Thanksgiving last year, our family has been forced to change again. Nana died in December, and Grandpa’s death followed in January. Lung cancer took my mother suddenly two months ago.
We are a family who will grieve the losses at the Thanksgiving table this year. With only my dad, we will miss those who are not with us.
I have spent a lot of time pondering the memories I have of my family. In searching for an answer as to what Thanksgiving really means, I asked the third-grade students I teach to write down why Thanksgiving was significant to them.
The children did not hesitate as they began to write, and they were in agreement. Thanksgiving is a special holiday because it is a day for families to be together.
That was all. They did not expect anything more of their families, finding their joy in a family only being itself. One little girl even added that the day is special because families would make memories together.
It is a lesson I learned from children, who simply know what a Thanksgiving should be. They already knew how to do it right.
