Gather ‘Round the Table

 

For some strange reason, the year my younger brother Tim made his First Holy Communion in 1970, our parish thought it would be a great idea for that to occur on Thanksgiving Day instead of the customary springtime like I had two years prior. Aside from making it difficult to find Communion attire, greeting cards and decorations at that time of the year, it posed a great quandary for my parents: Do we hold a Communion party and skip the traditional Thanksgiving dinner or host a crowd for turkey and all the fixings?

Of course, a hue and cry rose from those attached to a turkey dinner when my mom tossed out the idea to toss the turkey that year. So, my mom, to appease the family, opted for a sit-down, turkey dinner for 28 people. At that time, my dad had not yet put in our game room, and we had a small kitchen, and a dining room that only accommodated our family of six comfortably, and a living room.

To help my mother, both of my grandmothers offered to cook a turkey.

On the big day, my family set up folding tables and card tables everywhere and both sides of my family came for the happy occasion. My paternal and maternal grandparents were very different in temperament. My widowed Grandma Aggie Lane went to Mass most every day and never swore except for one time when my youngest brother, David, squirted her in the butt with a hose, and she exclaimed, “Damn you, David.” It was shocking and still lives in family lore.

My maternal Grandma, Gert Hughes, and her mother, my Great-Grandmother Cornelia Ledergerber, swore like crazy (not F bombs, but vulgarities.) Grandma Gert smoked, read novels, and loved soap operas. She believed in God but was not nearly as devout at Grandma Aggie.

If you want to create tension, throw four cooks into a tiny kitchen to prepare a massive Thanksgiving dinner. The Hughes side of the family made their stuffing with an egg in it, and the Lane side of the family liked their stuffing dry. One side liked the jellied canned cranberries and the others liked whole cranberries. My Grandma Leder was old school and wanted to sew her turkey shut with twine after stuffing it, while Grandma Aggie thought the new metal wires that closed the cavity and came on the turkey was a great innovation much to the disgust of Grandma Leder.

Each of these women had their own method for making gravy, and as they stood in the kitchen with their turkey drippings in cups trying to concoct their “best” gravy, my Uncle Bill on his way to get a drink, called out, “I’m next in line to make gravy!”

To which my Grandma Leder replied, “Oh, Billy you’re full of sh*t.”

I neglected to share that among the guests that day was my dad’s Aunt Gert, Grandma Aggie’s older sister, who was officially known as Sr. Euphemia, a Mercy nun.

When Grandma swore, my mom shushed her, “Grandma, the nun.”

And Grandma replied, “Ah, the hell with the nun.”

When dinner was ready, we all sat down for a memorable Thanksgiving dinner. Although my grandparents’ personalities were very different, they always respected one another and, in fact, liked and got along well, even under stressful circumstances like competing to make the best gravy.

And why? Because they shared something. They loved us.

There’s a home movie of that Communion Party/Thanksgiving Dinner, and on it are all my grandmas, clad in their aprons, crammed in the kitchen. In the next segment, Grandma Leder is standing with several of her great-grandchildren, including my brother, Tim, the Communion boy, and she’s hugging us and giving Tim a kiss.

It doesn’t matter who makes the best gravy, how you stuff your turkey, or if you’re stuck sitting on a telephone book at a card table. What matters is if there is love around your table, and this Thanksgiving, I hope you have an abundance of it.

Prisoners of Our Own Devices

We write our articles somewhat in advance because of printing deadlines; therefore, I’m writing this only two weeks after the autumnal equinox. I love summer so much, and as we bid this one farewell, I was thinking about what some of the best moments of this one were for me, and although a trip to the beach came to mind immediately, one small thing kept coming back to me.

Sometimes on Friday afternoons, I go to Mass, and one Friday at the beginning of August, I ran into a friend there, Patti. We went to high school together. Although she’s a friend, she’s not one I talk to every week. Nevertheless, she invited me back to her house that afternoon at 4 o’clock, explaining that she often has a few people over for an hour or two on Friday afternoons before dinner just to relax and celebrate the arrival of the weekend. As it happened, I was able to go, and I sat on Patti’s patio with her, and two other high school chums, Donna and Carol. We had simple snacks and iced tea, and we just talked for more than two hours until it was time to go home for dinner. There were no selfies, no music, no one pulled out a phone; we just sat in the summer breeze and laughed, reminisced, and talked about what was going on in our lives.

I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been so starved for human contact because of the lockdowns that it made just spending time together that much more special, but that Friday afternoon was one of the best times of my summer.

That evening, my husband and I went out to dinner, and I noticed something that I hope is not a trend. There were two different families at the restaurant and each of them had a small child with them, but what I noticed was that each of those children, instead of sitting and talking to their family gathered around the table, they had headphones on and were absorbed into an iPad screen. I know some children have sensory issues and as someone who had twins, I know it can be rough dining out with children, but how do children learn good behavior if they can’t ever be bored? How do they learn to relate to others if their eyes are glued to a screen?

I’m not the only one who has noticed that kids are missing out on the here and now. A Twitter firestorm erupted right after that trip to the restaurant when a woman posted this Tweet: “At Disneyland with the family and probably 50% of toddlers are strapped in their strollers on iPads or phones. At Disneyland. We are so screwed.”

There’s a funny online meme of a group of people seated around a table, and they are all ignoring each other and focused on their cell phones. It has a caption that hearkens back to the lyrics from The Eagles song Hotel California, and it says, “The Eagles were right, we are all just prisoners here of our own device.”

We are coming up on Thanksgiving, and I urge you to rediscover the beauty of connecting with others. Don’t become a prisoner of your screen. Sure, I’m going to take a few photos when everyone gathers to commemorate the occasion, but then I’m going to set aside my phone.

That feeling of peacefulness and connectedness I experienced this summer on Patti’s patio doesn’t have to be a rare event. It can happen anytime you are gathered. After long periods of isolation in lockdown it’s time to unplug and reconnect with others. Thanksgiving is meaningless if we don’t acknowledge and appreciate those seated around our table. Happy Thanksgiving!

 

The Discipline of Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I just read a great blog post for Thanksgiving by Jeff Goins.  Click here to read it, but one of the points he makes that I liked best is that gratitude is a discipline.  I'd never thought of it that way.  That got me to thinking--which can be very dangerous.

Being grateful isn't inherent to humans.  You will know this if you've every raised children.  How many times as a parent have you repeated these words to your small child:  "What do you say?"  Then you wait for the "Thank you."

Gratitude was a discipline when you were a child, and it remains one as we grow older.  To attain the higher things in life requires discipline.  You don't remain fit without the discipline to eat properly and workout (I should know).  You don't remain solvent without the fiscal discipline to resist buying every item that catches your eye.  You don't remain employed without the discipline to work hard and meet deadlines.  You don't achieve your writing dreams without the discipline to glue your bum to a chair and pound out words.  The examples go on and on.  

Clearly discipline leads to greater rewards.  When we practice the discipline of gratitude, what is the reward?  Besides making you and others feel better, it changes your perspective from one of lack to abundance.  All the self-help books tell you that you have to think it before you can see it.  Having an appreciative attitude is a creative mindset and opens the world to you.  It's small pain in the beginning for large gain later. 

This year I had the privilege to visit Plymouth, Massachusetts, when my daughter ran the Boston Marathon.  Below are a few pictures.  

When I first saw the replica of the Mayflower there, I couldn't believe how many people had been crammed in it and how treacherous it must have been to cross the vast ocean in that tiny ship. In early April, Plymouth looked very barren.  I can't imagine how inhospitable this stretch of coastline must have seemed to those Pilgrims who landed there.  

But instead of bemoaning their puny boat, rugged landscape, and how much work and uncertainty they faced in this new home--including death--they set aside time to be grateful to God that they had arrived safely, were free, and had survived well enough to harvest food for a feast.  

Their humble discipline of gratitude has opened the world to us.  May their discipline of gratitude be a shining example to us all and continue to open this great nation and it's people to even more blessings.  

Now to get that 23 pound bird into the oven!  

Happy Thanksgiving!