A few days ago, my Aunt Susie posted on Facebook a photo taken by my grandfather, the family shutterbug, on Thanksgiving Day, 1960. I was seven years old. I looked at the picture, not exactly remembering the day, but remembering the excitement I felt on that day. Everybody was there – everybody! My cousins Patty and Gary had been in town from Kansas City with their parents, my Uncle Jack and Aunt Alma. The picture included my parents, my sister, both my grandmothers, two of my great-aunts and their husbands, my great-grandmother, my great-uncle, my aunt Susie, and a woman, partially hidden in the photo, whom I believe to be “Aunt Alice.” I’m still not sure why we called Aunt Alice “Aunt,” but we did.
When I look at the picture, I can’t drag my eyes away, because although I didn’t know then what the future held for us all, now I look at each person and know his or her story – at least up to now, 56 years later. While we all look happy, the picture does not foreshadow sadness that was to come. Like most families, we have suffered from our share of divorces, illnesses, discord and sadness, addiction, and times of darkness. But when I look at that picture, I see one big happy family, a family who enjoyed being together, and a family who, because so many of us lived so close together, probably took that geographical closeness for granted.
They are the reason we want to be together on days like Thanksgiving.
On Thursday, we came together, the descendants of the people in the picture, full of joy, happiness, and hope for the future. And just like the people in the old picture, none of us in this year’s photo knows what the future will bring.
We laughed and talked and ate – quite a good Thanksgiving dinner, if I do say so myself, with turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts and bacon, pureed parsnips, twice baked butternut squash, and sweet potato pecan pie – and listened to the children chase each other around, yelling and giggling. Our cousin Patty came from Spokane and insisted that we not tell Libby – their birthdays are three weeks apart and they have always had a special relationship – and it was fun to watch Libby’s face when she realized she was looking at Patty, who wasn’t supposed to be here.
We watched the newest family member, Poppy, age around six months, sleep and wake and look at all of us, discovering something and someone new. We watched the little girls eat dinner at the “Kids Table.” We used FaceTime to connect with some of our cousins who could not be with us because they were in the Chicago area with other family members. We talked with my friend Mirwais and saw his sons Tasal and Ozair, and he reported that on this, his third Thanksgiving in the United States, he and his family ate turkey.
I observed our gathering on Thursday and traveled back in time to the 1960 picture, when we laughed and talked and ate – Grandma cooked every year – and I realized that all those people in the picture were still with us in one way or another – in Grandma’s stuffing and Mother’s strawberry wine gelatin, in the way Patty’s daughters laugh, and in the way one of their daughters looks like Patty when she was five or six.
Oh, there have been times when we have drifted apart, when we couldn’t even think of coming together for Thanksgiving, but in the end, spending this Thanksgiving together was, just like those many years ago, what families do.
I keep coming back to that 1960 picture, and I hope that 56 years from now, one of our descendants looks at our pictures from 2016, and remembers that this Thanksgiving was a great day, that regardless of what happens between now and then, they will come together for a day of giving thanks generally, but especially for each other, and for the people who brought them to that place. Because that’s what families do.
