My family is normal.
I have parents who have been happily married for nearly 30 years. I have two wonderful younger brothers, B and A. A cool dog. And a sweet (to me) cat. Pretty straightforward, right?
This year for thanksgiving, as we have the last few years, we had dinner at my parent's home. My youngest brother, A, wasn't able to come home this year - something about being a senior in college and having 2-3 jobs and learning 2 new languages - it was fine, I wouldn't want to drive 12 hours in possible snow either.
We did our recently established holiday routine. Sleep in. Cook. Hang Christmas lights. Eat.
No big drama. No football. I think my mom may have watched part of the Macy's parade while she was cooking. But, it was nothing like the thanksgivings we see depicted on television and in movies. Just a quiet day at home with our immediate family.
It wasn't boring. There were moments that were challenging and required creative problem solving.
Exhibit A: there are two gigantic bushes in the front of our house, so huge that they impede our ability to hang the Christmas lights along the gutter. Several ladders were needed, a few tense words were spoken, and Mom even got the tree clippers out. The best part was when Dad and I balanced the ladder on the bush and B bobbed around for a few minutes, miraculously managing to clip the light strand to the gutter.
Exhibit B: Dad decided to deep fry the turkey this year which required some careful planning. Did you know if you don't drain all of the water out of the turkey before deep frying, you can create an explosion? With that information in mind, my mom drained that sucker dry. When it came out of the fryer, the turkey looked like a fossilized alien head. So appetizing!
It was just a simple day to celebrate God's faithfulness and praise Him.
We went around the table at dinner and gave the things we were thankful for and then we talked about our favorite thanksgivings.
My favorite thanksgiving memory didn't happen on thanksgiving - is that cheating? Eh, don't care. I was in high school - a sophomore, I think. My family had driven 7 hours to my mom's sister's house in Detroit. My mom's sister, S is married to my dad's best friend, F and they have three daughters: H, T, and S, and one son, D. I think it was the day after Thanksgiving, Dad and Uncle F were planning their annual escape from the family politics and invited me and cousin S to join them.
They took us to a restaurant in Greektown and told us stories about the glory days. When I was very young, we had lived with Uncle F and Aunt S in a Detroit suburb. Dad and Uncle F would go down to Greektown and get baklava for our moms. On date nights, they would eat at Pegasus. So that's where our dads took S and I. They teased each other and told us about their memories together in college and after they had married sisters. We walked around Greektown after dinner and they picked up baklava for their wives, just like they used to ten years before.
I told that story yesterday, and Dad vaguely remembered. What can I say? He's a geezer.
But, it got me to thinking.
Dad and Uncle F weren't thinking about the memory they were creating for S and myself when they took us to Greektown. They didn't know it was going to be a powerful demonstration of their love for us. They just wanted to get out of the house and away from the tension between other family members. But, they gave us attention that we craved at the age. S must have been in 8th grade at the time. At 13 and 15, we needed our fathers' love positively demonstrated.
So, if someday, God blesses me with children, I need to remember this thanksgiving as an example of how the things that my children will remember may not seem like a big deal to me at the time. And it might be such a long time before they tell me its significance that I'll probably be old and forget.
Regardless, I want to be intentional in relationships. Careful with my words and actions. Temper my harsh glances. And give hugs and genuine compliments with abandon.
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