For all of you who are planning to
gather with family during the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I envy you and I
hope you enjoy your time together. You see my family has made the difficult and
very emotional choice to spend this holiday apart to protect each other from the
Corona virus.
Since making this choice as a
family, it has provided me the opportunity to reflect back on my previous 65 Thanksgivings
and I can remember only once not gathering with family whether it was at our family
farm every year prior to 2012 or at one of my daughter’s homes here in Columbus
or Austin, Texas.
My only Thanksgiving apart from my
family was the year I had moved to Richmond, Virginia for a new job. I did have
the day off but not enough time to travel home to Ohio, so I spent the day
preparing a turkey roll, boxed mashed potatoes and a pumpkin pie that had the
consistency of soup. A phone call to the farm where my family and my future
in-law family were enjoying the day together also made me sad and jealous
knowing of the conversations, the laughter, the smells, the food, the walk
through the woods that I was missing but grateful knowing they were together
and would be for the next 40 years.
Thanksgiving at the farm was always
an open invitation to family and friends, a place to gather if the option was a
day alone or just to bring a friend to experience what seemed to be the perfect
Thanksgiving and enjoy my Grandma’s cooking. The menu was no different than
anyone else would have and the good china and silverware would be on display on
a dining room table that was surrounded with more chairs than elbow room and seemed to strain under the weight of the
food on the plates and serving dishes.
It was the day my kids would bring their
school picture and slide it in front of the previous year’s pictures, all crammed
into their great grandma’s 8 ½ x 11 frames that she lovingly displayed on a
large round table in a room that was called the Christmas tree room where a month later we
would celebrate Christmas together.
Thanksgiving was the one day my
Grandma, a meat cutter by trade and a farm wife at home, became a woman obsessed
with table settings and the perfect dining table as if Miss Manners had somehow
taken over. We all gathered at a table set perfectly, weapons, er, silverware
laid out in correct order including salad forks and butter knives along with
plates and bowls of food sitting awaiting the initial lap around the table.
But one year something was missing
and only my 4-year-old brother took notice. He pried himself loose from his
place at the table and went to the kitchen and retrieved a plastic container of
strawberry jelly that would be a part of table settings any other day. This was
my Grandma’s much beloved and coveted freezer jelly and as I said, a staple
during any other meal. But much to the embarrassment seen on my Grandma’s face,
he placed it beside his plate, took what he needed and passed it on for others
to enjoy. Problem solved and a story to be told every year along with the price
of oysters in the oyster stuffing, what time the turkey went in the oven and
what exactly is minced meat.
We no longer celebrate these
holidays at the farm but my family, especially my kids, continue many of the traditions
and our family and often extended family has continued to gather as one, except
for this year.
After considering many options
including testing, gathering and staying 6 feet apart or eating in shifts, we
concluded the best thing we can do for ourselves in order to be safe and hopefully
remain healthy is to not come together as a family. In some ways it is a relief
and as I hear of more and more families choosing to do the same, I feel good
about our decision. My daughter and son-in-law will still cook the same food
and they have provided us a menu to choose what we would like on “our plate”
and they will box our choices up for us to pick up. Once everyone is home with
their food, we will gather, except this time on a Zoom call.
Our hope is that by making yet
another sacrifice this year, we are protecting each other as well as doing our
part to battle this deadly virus and next year and for years to come we will
again be able to celebrate holidays together.
It is becoming more and more obvious that until
each and every person in this country treats this virus and it’s deadly outcomes
as seriously as it has attacked the world, the problem is going to become more
serious and more deadly to the point where it will rob us of the freedom to choose
how we lead our daily lives, simply because too many selfishly ignore the obvious
and continue to infect our country with not only this virus but divisiveness.
If we are not smart enough to recognize
the truth that this disease is getting worse and mature enough to take the
responsibility to do the things that will help until a vaccine is ready, then we
will soon become the world’s test tube, demonstrating how not to battle
Covid19, let hospitals fill beyond the
capacity of the building and those working to provide care to the sick and dying
and continue to ignore the desperate needs of our fellow American’s whose jobs
and homes are disappearing each day. Welcome to the new American experiment.
So for that one day when we would
normally gather to celebrate what we are thankful for, I will spend the day
alone, not grateful for why this is happening, not thankful for the job I just
lost, but missing my family of which I may never see again should I somehow
contract Covid19. Nope, I will spend the day angry at the world and those who
continue to think of just themselves instead of taking a day to maybe change
the world and our once proud nation begin to heal instead of not caring about
those who have been lost to the ugliness of the last 8 months.
I do still envy those of you who
will gather with your family on Thanksgiving and I will pray for you and your
families that none of you get sick as a result of ignoring the advice given and
I will grieve along with you should something even worse happen to anyone in
your family. But I will not celebrate your good fortune should no one become
ill or die after Thanksgiving. I’m
saving that for the day we are rid of this disease and my family can again come
together with pride, knowing our sacrifices made a difference and we were a
part of the solution and not a cause of the problem. I just hope you and your families
can be grateful for that day as well. Happy Thanksgiving.
