I always feel bad for Thanksgiving.
Ironically, I was having a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner when I realized how the holiday deserves our sympathy. It seems like only 20 years ago we honored what the day was about, namely reflecting on how God has blessed our often undeserving and all-too-often ungrateful country. Today it’s shunted aside as a day off to watch football and go shopping, two contact sports in which I have little interest.
It’s been a few years since I enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving, although I have always loved the forgotten holiday. When my parents were still alive, Thanksgiving dinner was a study in dichotomy. Miss Lois always had a dress-up, sit-down dinner, with just a handful of family. Then we were on the road to Miss Rhonda’s family event, which is always roughly twice the size of the average family reunion. Add in the frustrating factor of sometimes unpredictable work schedules, and the holiday has always been a high-speed adventure.
For some reason, Thanksgiving seems to be a time when vehicles break down in creative and often life-threatening ways. There was the year when the steering wheel on my sporty little German coupe wrung off as we turned the corner to Mother and Papa’s street. Then there was the ever-reliable Dodge station wagon that developed something three different mechanics said they had never seen before. Another year saw a flat tire, a jack that broke (with the truck in the air) and an incredibly generous man and his mom who just happened to be passing by. Then there was the year my Suburban blew a fuel line the Monday before Thanksgiving.
As families and addresses and traditions have changed or moved or passed away through the years, it’s become less common for me to join my beloved and her family on feast day. We always have a smaller turkey gathering with my brother and a few folks who often visited Miss Lois’ table, but it’s just not the same. Nor would I expect it to be.
Besides, somebody’s got to take care of the animals, and while I love my family, I ain’t very proud to spend six hours in a vehicle for a one-hour visit. Handling the day’s chores in the dark after a day on the road is not my idea of fun.
On this particular Thanksgiving, I kissed my wife goodbye and sent her up the road to see the aunts and uncles and cousins and kinry, and I headed for the woods.
Shopping, secularism and sociopolitical correctness aside, Thanksgiving was originally a day of worship. As much as I love my church fellowship, I am never closer to the Maker than when I’m in a cathedral of pine trees, or the chapel of a hardwood lowland swamp.
On this particular, beautiful Thanksgiving, I had fed the horses, checked the traps and was feeling a bit peckish, so I went hunting for a picnic site. The bridge at Henry Farms was the most likely candidate for a Thanksgiving table, so with my bag of leftovers in hand, I settled in a sunspot for a feast worthy of a king – homemade pimento cheese sandwiches, country ham, some smoked turkey, a variety of vegetables, cornbread and biscuits, and more homemade desserts than the law allows. It was washed down with a bottle of tea and coffee from an antique thermos. I’m sure there are exclusive restaurateurs who would despair at providing such a meal.
The canal – almost a small river, really – chuckled below me, and the residents of the woods begrudgingly accepted or pointedly ignored my presence. I tried to be a good guest and mind my manners.
I was alone in what passes for quiet in the woods. There was no television, no trauma of shopping or no drama that inevitably comes to life when large groups of people gather. I didn’t even have a dog with me. A blue jay shrieked, and a squirrel or two cussed back at him for his poor behavior.
One cannot helped but be reflective in a place and time like that; I thought of how, even in the lean times and the tough moments, I’m really blessed – I have a patient and loving wife, a job I love, more true friends than a man deserves, good critters, a mostly warm home, plenty to eat, and really, very few problems, none of which were insurmountable. Over all that is the abiding love of Christ, which brings with it a gratitude that humbles even the proudest heart.
Leaning on the bridge that afternoon, I thought of those who through no choice of their own, were thousands of miles from their families, as well as the ones making sure everyone else could enjoy a safe holiday. I thought of the ones like the young woman I had met a while back, who is this year enjoying her first holiday season with a normal family. From the time she was a child, she knew things we won’t detail here; suffice to say she is now looking forward not just to a “real” Christmas, but a “real” Thanksgiving as well. I thought of the men and women who were finally able to give their families a home, never mind any of the special things like a big holiday meal. I prayed for the ones whose lives had not yet taken a turn for the better. I thought of those who have no idea what the next day brings, and those whose hope has been restored.
I spent the rest of the glorious afternoon amongst my friends, the trees; the traps had yielded a little fur, although nothing was suicidal enough to come past my deer stand. A few minutes by my favorite dove field were highlighted by a handful of silver-gray rockets flashing across the long-forgotten corn stalks, but they were too far out of range, or I was too lackadaisical, to pull the trigger.
A front coming in from the west gave us a kaleidoscope sunset that evening, as well as a precipitous drop in temperature. I lolled against my tree and watched God’s paintbrushes until the main canvas was behind the treeline. The shadows were growing long and the ground cold under my ill-padded rear, so it was only with minimal regret that I trudged back to the truck to go feed the horses. They too, were grateful as always, although their gratitude has always been more visceral than spiritual.
When my wife arrived home that evening, road-weary but full of family news, I had still another reason to be thankful. Others may have enjoyed a boisterous, happy crowd of fellow diners, and others reveled in the thrill of the hunt for deals (which come entirely too soon, in my opinion), and still others were content in front of a football game.
I had celebrated Thanksgiving in my own way, smelling the perfume of the pines whilst remembering Mother’s smile when she could finally relax and sit down with the family. I had scanned the ground for tracks as my father’s old joke about tossing away the toasting glass ran through my mind again, more than a decade after the last time Mother worried Papa would lose his grip on the tiny antique.
As my sister and her huge family had given thanks, N’Awleans style, I had taken a quick break with a piece of pumpkin pie only slightly less delicious than my mother’s. When my wife had been playing with our nieces, I had been watching a pair of young hawks dispute some issue to which I wasn’t privy, but which they found important enough to bring a breathtaking play to a bright blue sky turned stage.
Then I got to go home to dogs who were overjoyed at my homecoming, and later when Miss Rhonda’s headlights turned up the driveway, I was the one who was overjoyed.
The next day, someone asked (as we are wont to do) if I’d had a good Thanksgiving. Remembering the memories of holidays past, and the sun on my face as I dined on leftovers on a broken-down wooden bridge, I had to say yes indeed, I did.
Thanksgiving is a forgotten holiday by many folks, but that one – along with every one before, and I pray hence – remains unforgettable.
