What a Real Family Thanksgiving Looks Like

Memory is a magician. Did you know that?

With perspective in one hand and the passage of time in the other, memory fools us into thinking that our past family holidays and get-togethers look like a Norman Rockwell piece of art.

When they don't - and the pressure is real because postings on social media imply everyone else is having that type of holiday - our spirits can sink lower than an elephant in quicksand.

I feel like any time you herd a bunch of relatives into one room, they'll butt heads as often as they rub shoulders. Add a heaping seasoning of real life to the occasion, and you can end up with scorched feelings, even if the food turns out perfectly and the decor is magazine-worthy.

We wisely choose to forget the negative parts as the special day passes. But we should try to remember them in real time so our expectations are realistic.

So...

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving, full of love, joy, peace, and good food.

But let me tell you what was happening in the background.

One adult child had surgical extraction at a major medical university of all the teeth in his mouth one week before Thanksgiving.

My father now has Alzheimer's, and Ron has been in a nursing home with dementia for the last few years.

Two adult children are going through either a separation or divorce and both situations are challenging.

Two relatives (an in-law and step-grandson) had COVID over Thanksgiving, which nixed any carefully curated plans those members of the family had made.

One adult child is struggling with depression.

We have several relatives on the autism spectrum.

Many are struggling with finances.

More than a few greeted Thanksgiving Day overworked and underslept, so tempers flared here and there and now and then.

We dined only with immediate family because it's still COVID - although our natural inclination in a pre-pandemic world is to cook a bunch of food and host a bunch of people in a open-house fashion.

We also ordered five dinners from an expensive restaurant to send to a single parent family in our family - and the food was not as good as anticipated.

Quick side story.

Years ago, when my family was throwing newspapers, I occasionally hired the teen son of some acquaintances. My kids had lots of inserts to assemble for their paying customers, so this son helped with throwing and porching papers.

On the day before Thanksgiving, I had said son with me and I asked him what he was "thankful for" this year.

He said, "My family, my friends, and my church - because without God, I don't know where I'd be."

The next day, he helped me again with one of my routes. Except on this day, he was pretty shaken up. He did not know his family was having money problems. And when he woke up to leave for the route, the family vehicle was gone. It had been repossessed.

So I reminded him what he was "thankful for" this year. And I further reminded him that one of those items was not the family car.

In fact, everything this young man treasured, he still had on that Thanksgiving Day. And he could rejoice and be glad in that.

Now I understand some of us had to stretch this year to rejoice and be glad. We may have lost loved ones to COVID, cancer, or family rifts. We may have lost our homes, our jobs, our health, a good friend.

But in every hour, in every minute, we can find a blessing.

If you spent Thanksgiving alone, perhaps you're blessed with support on social media.

Or perhaps you're meant to reach out to someone who is lonelier than you are. Because that person does exist.

So maybe, if you can't find a blessing, your job is to make one. There's an old saying: "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

Back to our house.

We were so busy cooking, we forgot to take photos. So I don't have any to share.

We didn't take any photos of us sitting around the table because an argument broke out at at the start of dinner. That dinner photo at the top of this post? That's from last year.

We didn't take any photos of us sitting around the table playing games bcause an argument broke out at the start of the first game.

OK.

Those things do happen.

Those things did pass.

I can tell you that, for most of the day, we rested a lot, ate a lot of wonder homemade food, connected with loved ones, and laughed for hours, way, way, way past midnight.

That's midnight, the hour, not the cat. Sorry Midnight.

And when next Thanksgiving rolls around again, the love, the laughter, the food prepared with love and laughter (we didn't laugh at it, we laughed with each other as we prepared), the peace, the relaxation - those are the parts that we will remember and treasure.

As we should.

The rest?

Address it, in love, if it's a real issue.

If it's not, let it go...