Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. Jeff and I will gather with my cousin Norman’s family around a long, long table in a very small house on Potrero Hill for a Thanksgiving feast. Every year, we each make time to visit again with extended family to hear a few words about the past year, to hear what family life is like at this age, to mention how good everything that everyone has brought is, to hear laughter and conversations that don’t always make it all the way through – there are too many of us to catch up with! I bring the pies – pumpkin, apple, and two cherry pies made with cherries imported from Door County, Wisconsin, where my father and Norman’s father grew up.
Before we start to eat, Norman will undoubtedly turn to either me or Jeff – the resident clergy – to say a blessing. The room will be quiet for a few moments, and after the Amen! the chatter will rise up again.
Since tomorrow is The Day, I’ll be at work in the kitchen after dinner today, baking the pies. Cheryl, Norman’s wife, has spent most of her week getting ready, cooking whatever she can that can be prepared early. She’ll have empty glasses and full bottles of wine on the kitchen counter, along with snack foods for us, in case we arrive to the fest hungry. Norman will roam around the tiny house with his camera in hand, snapping pictures of his grandchildren. And when we sit down to eat, a portrait of the Bahlert family of Sister Bay will look down on us as we eat, maybe offering an unspoken blessing to the gathered voices.
It seems to me that getting ready for Thanksgiving Day holds as many joys as the day itself. After all those hours of preparation, soon one family after another will be at the door, donning coats, carrying goodies of leftovers from the feast, saying goodbye.
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Holiday time in the Bay Area has a different feel to me than holiday time in the cold and grey Midwest, where Jeff and I both grew up. Holiday time in the Midwest followed days of already cold weather and winds off Lake Michigan, days when winter coats and gloves were already out for the long season ahead. And holiday time as a child, when there was a sense of magic in the air, ended a long, long time ago. But these days are a good time to remember those who are no longer here, but who have never left us, in a way. I’m sure they are with us: in our voices, in our laughter, in our smiles and in the curls in our hair.
And these days are a good time to be grateful, for all that life that has passed, all the beloved ones who are gone, and for the long table of young voices that gather to help us celebrate the holiday, again.
