Thanksgiving: What it Means To Me Now

Today is an important day because I'm told it is. The calendar, as it does every year, lands upon the fourth Thursday of November and forces from people obligatory expressions of gratitude. The giving of thanks - not because I don't any other day, but because today I must. For most of my life, I was cynical to the values assigned with the holiday. I didn't buy into it. Not really until this past year.

To me, there had never been any special significance of this day beyond the feast. For most of my teenage and young-adult life my family has traveled down to Georgia to meet up with members of my mothers-side at my Grandparents house. The weekend was spent as most family gatherings are - checking in, touching base, and filling in the gaps since last year's Thanksgiving. But the crown jewel, the heart of the trip, hit your nose as you walked through the front door. That smell. Grandma's cooking to me was always more than a cliché - it was provable. A lot changed from childhood to my twenties - schools, jobs, personality traits, hobbies, and interests. A lot changed. But not that smell. That smell was a time-machine - the buttermilk fresh biscuit aroma sneaking out of the oven, blending with the no bake cookies drying atop the counter, alongside the cinnamon and nutmeg apple filling that was heaped in a bowl waiting to find its final resting place in a fresh, floury pie crust being rolled out on the island in the middle of the kitchen. All of these incredible scents fought for attention as they arrived at my nostrils. Every year the same combination of smells and every year the same ear-to-ear smile draped across my face as I considered the gluttonous future I had ahead of me. There's something to be said about that kind of consistency.

I fasted for a solid day before this meal just to clear space (for me that fasting really only meant not asking for a second pack of peanuts on the flight down). Meal time came and we split time telling family stories and memories with shoveling food into our already full mouths (maybe that was just me). The pattern from then on was predictable - eating myself into an early evening coma only to wake up, wipe my brow of the sweat that had formed during my turkey-induced slumber, and trudge to the kitchen grabbing left-overs.As if the sun setting on the previous meal some how erased the shame I should have felt for gorging myself to the point of inebriation. It's the Super Bowl of meals though - are you really going to sit out with a tummy ache? No shot. Push yourself off the couch, add a notch to that belt loop, and get back in there. It didn't hurt that Grandpa was right there next to me making another turkey, gravy, and stuffing sandwich in a biscuit. Respect your elders and do as they do, I thought.

"Your Grandma is trying to put me on a graham cracker diet", he'd say with a smile, still making his sandwich on the counter but looking out of the top of his glasses to see my grandma's reaction.

"Ooooh, Robert...", she'd say with a sense jovial criticism as she rolled her eyes.

Grandma, of course, always supported it. Her cooking was true, thick, and American - with her culinary skills influenced by residences in Iowa, Texas, and Georgia. Dishes that Paula Dean wouldn't hate. Each year it seemed each side got a little heartier and more gratifying. And for the same reason, each year the continued eating that made up the later part of this day of excessive consumption became increasingly appealing. She likely considered it a failure if you left the same weight as you arrived. Their house was, during this holiday, as warm, full, and filled with love as it would be all year. And for my grandparents, who spent their days thinking about how to keep an impressively large family together, this was when they were happiest. Generations eating, playing, and joking together.

And as I recount the schedule of each Thanksgiving I realize that my cynicism was generated by something that ran counter to the reason for the season. I showed little true thanks because I took for granted what for much of my life I assumed was permanent - the people around the table. There was no acknowledgement in my mind that this privilege of family ever could change. For a majority of my life I consider myself to have been fortunate - bad health or any other undesirable circumstances ceased to exist in my immediate family members. Thanksgiving was my anchor - while everything changed around me, this would always be the same, I'd thought. It didn't ever register that, looking around the table, seats could be empty.

When we lost my grandfather 2 years ago, the table had a gaping hole in it. We ate and chatted and prayed and recounted stories and loved in his memory. We still watched Johnny Carson re-runs as he would have insisted, and we still had cinnamon rolls and coffee the morning after like he would have requested. It started to hit me then. This feeling of permanence was protected by a wall that was built on lack of exposure to significant familial challenges and was slowly starting to crumble. Last year, when my grandmother passed, we didn't make the trip down to Georgia. The holiday, for the first time in m life, was changing. Ready or not, impermanence makes itself known to you when it matters most.

And now, when I'm further away from my family than I've ever been at this time of year, I think I finally understand it. I understand not just what it means to give thanks, but where my neglect to realize it earlier came from.

We celebrated the holiday at our house in Jersey that year. As I descended the staircase from my room to the kitchen the morning of Thanksgiving, a familiar scent returned to my nose. Grandma's cooking. My mom and sister were in the kitchen following her exact recipes. The same dishes we always ate hit the table for yet another year and I, yet again, stuffed my face like a rescued Tom Hanks in Castaway. The family that could make it still gathered together (and the ones that couldn't celebrated in the same way). Table talk consisted of family memories and stories. And as I sat, ate, and listened, I smiled and realized - my grandparents built this much in the same way that their parents before them, and theirs before them had. Our Thanksgiving wasn't changing, but sustaining. Our traditions may have morphed aesthetically, but they maintained in a way that would make my grandparents proud. If I use the past to inform the future, I see what this holiday means not just for my portion of family history, but for the generations that came before and will follow. Eventually titles will shift - parents becoming grandparents, children bearing their own, and new souls to take up the role of youthful neglect.

I was wrong. This holiday isn't an obligation. It's a choice. You actively choose to surround yourself with the people who, for your entire life and theirs, will provide you with unequivocal support and appreciation. You surround yourself with the memory of the people whose presence cannot be touched, but are fully felt through a smell, a song, or a television re-run.

Maybe my youthful too-cool-for-school attitude was right about something, though.  Maybe we aren't meant to spend a considerable amount of time during this holiday attempting to grasp the rarity of a table full of loved ones. Instead, we should spend that time existing in it. Life tends to move at a rate that my consciousness and appreciations struggle to keep up with. Value is found in scarcity or impossibility - the economics of the spirit, I suppose. Catch up with that value and see it as it is now. So as you sit around your table today, look at the faces of those who chose to join you in this annual feast, and try, for just today, to be present. Lock in this moment. Capture the smells, the colors, the smiles, the stories. Because, while life happens, you can't erase a memory.

Happy Thanksgiving to my family (both blood and chosen), friends and acquaintances.