Since 1992, my favorite part of Thanksgiving has been the short amount of time I spend each year sitting with my dad on the front porch steps of wherever I am, drinking a glass of bourbon and sharing a toast with him.  His last Thanksgiving on earth was in 1991.  But we still visit.  And toast.  At least once a year.

Traditions.

Families still gather.  We eat, we drink, we argue.  That's what families do.  Those of us alone on such a day reflect.  We remember all that was good.  And somewhere on our lonely journey of tears on this day, we find familiar destinations of remembrance and fully understand all that was and is important.  We smile at what we remember.  And in our thoughts we gather, eat, drink and argue once more with our loved ones now gone.

Some of us will spend this Thanksgiving day in a "Walton's" kind of way.  The perfect Norman Rockwell day.  It will be a grand feast.  Then again, many of us will try to do the same and fail miserably.  Both ways are traditional ones.

Others of us will move from natural traditions to other natural ones.  When traditional family gatherings dissolve, we will move on to new ones - new meals at new places with new people sharing our tables, or with us being blessed by sharing someone else's table.  New food even.  Different wines.  Maybe coconut cake instead of pumpkin pie.  Maybe canned peas instead of green bean casserole.  Maybe real cranberries instead of the canned jelly stuff my mom always plopped and sliced on a small and refined s-shaped crystal dish.
 
Maybe we men will watch football and nap with other men while the women-folk gather in the kitchen.  Maybe we men-folk will cook while the women watch with the young ones televised parades from New York and elsewhere.  Maybe we will all sit and enjoy on television the Thanksgiving editions of our favorite "Housewives Of" series.  Or.  Maybe we will do as I did some 27 years ago.  Sit most of the day with an infant son, then eat steamed shrimp brought by surprise to our house by my wife's parents on a Thanksgiving night that she had to work.  I do not recall watching television at all on that Thanksgiving.  And, of course, my father-in-law's tangy homemade cocktail sauce more than adequately replaced the plopping jelly stuff on that day.

Maybe we will go to K-Mart at 8am instead of embarking on more traditional journeys - like quests for a breakfast biscuit at an open Burger King on Thanksgiving morning.  Those dead-end searches were, for quite a few years, a main tradition enjoyed by my young son and me when I was a young dad. 

Maybe we will work at K-Mart and be torn from our traditional family gatherings just to earn a meager living early on Thanksgiving morning.  Low  paying work and distance kept me from similar traditions with my family years ago.  Back then, traditional Thanksgivings for me took place with my parents, two siblings and my brother's young family in Jacksonville, Florida.  One holiday, I was bound to my job in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  A co-worker and a great friend, David Hirt, welcomed me into his home on that day.  He and his beautiful wife made their home mine.  They fed me.  They shared drink with me.  On that day, they were my family.  We will forever be related in that way.  I have other non-blood family.  I worked with that bunch in Durham, North Carolina one Thanksgiving day, another holiday when I was in strange territory and removed from my tradition.  Our leader on the job that night was a man named Jeff Hester.  His wonderful wife brought to all of us a Thanksgiving meal and fellowship that is, well, unforgettable.  A couple of other times, my mom's sisters in North Carolina nourished my Thanksgiving appetite and soul while my mom in Florida missed me as much as I did her. 

You know what?  Back then and those times, I hated my life.  I wanted to be home.  I wanted to embrace one more time the traditions my Thanksgivings past had always encouraged.  I wanted to eat, drink and argue.  With my immediate family!  I resented a great deal not being where I needed to be those times.  Yeah.  I was pretty bitter back then.  Until, that is, David Hirt's wife so graciously welcomed me into their home.  Until Jeff Hester's wife smiled so beautifully at me as she placed  in front of my work station a plate of food she had worked so hard and lovingly to prepare.  And I have to say that I was pretty devastated spending that one Thanksgiving, preparing for my family at hand that day only a meal of Gerber peas and carrots - until those wonderful in-laws arrived with shrimp and spices.

Tradition is good, especially at this time of year.  But traditions evolve or abruptly change.  And we ease our way into new ones.  Or we force ones that suit us.  The past couple of decades, my traditional contribution to the meal has been mashed potatoes.  This year I have been delegated to provide the mac and cheese for my son, daughter-in-law, grandchildren and more.  The promise of the new outcomes, for me anyway, seem so damned natural.  A new tradition.  And boiling macaroni is much easier than peeling a five pound bag of Idahos.

Thanksgiving.

It is a day to remember.  To smile. To cry. To laugh. To eat familiar and new things.  To be with familiar and new friends.  To recall old friends who became family.  To be with family.  To be alone. 

To toast a dead man.

It is what the day is to each of us now.

It is a day to just be. 

And, above all - a day to simply be thankful for what is.

The thing is, I love daylight saving time, but I really am getting too old to appreciate these abrupt semi-annual changes of life rhythms. Changes in rhythms are disheartening to an approaching senior citizen. I can only imagine how disturbing this all is to a full-fledged senior!

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I usually don't entertain on Thursday nights at my place. In fact, I cannot recall doing such a thing in many years. But I'd like to think that if I have ever had folks over on a late-week late-night visit, I would have had more than the bag of bite sized Milky Ways I served my guests last Thursday.  

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There was a time when solid life patterns clearly gave to each of us a vision of what our life was to be. The patterns we saw and studied came from our parents, or from what we wanted our parents to be. And from what they wanted to be. The patterns came from our grandparents who, in their later years, maybe chose not to talk too much, but who quietly lived the silent and contented lives their own patterns seemingly gave so easily to them. And the patterns came from network television's Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Ward and ... << MORE >>

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A good friend of mine writes political columns online and elsewhere. I think the world of this man and of what he writes, but I think he is missing the boat here. Terribly.

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