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Every year at Thanksgiving, my mother would place a kernel of dried Indian corn on our plates, and one-by-one she would ask each of us to hold the corn between our fingers and answer this question for the entire table to hear: What are you thankful for this year? It was a corny tradition (pun intended) but we participated anyway, repeating the same answers year after year: beautiful children, loving partners, adoring parents, warm homes, delicious food. Who wouldn’t be thankful for these things?
But these are surface answers – easy and satisfying. We name them quickly, so we can get to eating the turkey and the pie, and move along to Christmas and decorating and presents. The process of giving thanks becomes just a blip in the road to Santa’s sleigh. Fortunately, Santa doesn’t expect you to be thankful, just jolly.
That pisses me off.
So let me ask the question: In a world where Thanksgiving is merely the day before Black Friday; where politicians scorn those less fortunate; where some lives matter more than others; where Christmas carols play before Halloween to extend the “real” holiday where cash is king rather than the child for whom that holiday is named – what are you really thankful for?
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I detest glossing over it so we can get to the pile of presents under the tree. Gratitude is the gift. The value of a holiday is more than its economic impact. Our values reflect what we hold in our hearts, where space is small and real estate is at a premium.
So what is it you are really thankful for? What secret do you store in your soul for which you are deep-in-your bones grateful? What can’t you say at a dinner table with extended family and guests you’ve just met because it’s just too much? What won’t you say aloud, even to yourself, afraid it might disappear into the ether? What have you been given that you don’t deserve, that others don’t have, that makes your life worth the chemicals you are made of?
I’ll go first. I am grateful for my ‘child eyes.’
Let me explain: Thanksgiving became my favorite holiday because as a child we spent every Thanksgiving at my Nanny’s house in South Richmond. Every part of our somewhat fractured and confusing family showed up. On good years, my five cousins travelled from Ohio and stayed a full week. With everyone there, we’d have about twenty people in a 1,500 square foot house vying for a square foot of upholstery upon which to sit and eat their turkey.
It was glorious pandemonium.
The meal was unremarkable. Nanny wasn’t a gourmet. The stuffing was gooey and the peas were hard. Cool Whip was as fancy as she got. Her gravy had an inch of oil floating atop thick meaty juice. She called it “grease gravy,” and she was fiercely proud of it.
Fortunately the pies were from Safeway.
Everyone smoked – inside and all the time. Nanny inhaled her Virginia Slims by the carton. Her husband, my step-grandfather, smoked cheap cigars one after the other. Aunt Patty & Sissy also smoked and my dad longed to. He’d go outside to sneak one or two, and my sister and I would give him hell.
The house ran on radiator heat – dry and unrelenting. The thermostat sat at eighty degrees in a time when oil was plentiful-ish. We all knew fossil fuels were limited, but oil was cheap in the 70’s and we didn’t care. (If that sounds careless, especially considering climate change, it was.)
Between the cigarettes and churning furnace pumping boiling water through the pipes, the interior of the house felt like a resting volcano, smoke puffing from every corner while searing heat evaporated the sweat from your skin.
And I loved it. Large family, lots of food, plenty of kids to play with, and distracted adults created a day filled with adventure, laughter, and joy like no other kid could have. It was heaven.
All because of my ‘child eyes.’
I know now that my family wasn’t all High’s ice cream and Milky Ways. Dad didn’t get along with most of his siblings. Aunt Patty upset the apple cart of family expectations by moving in with her boyfriend. Racial epithets flew around the dinner table – it wasn’t right, but there it is. Arguments escalated and dissipated, then escalated again. My step-grandfather was recently caught in an affair. By noon, he was on his third bourbon and water and no one knew at which point his switch might flip from sloppy drunk to angry drunk.
That was the reality of our Thanksgiving. But as a kid, I knew none of it.
Every adult, including my step-grandfather, unselfishly made sure the children remained unaware and untouched by the issues they had with each other. They protected us from what could have been an explosion of jealousy and bitterness and pain. By their pure intention, in an otherwise impure environment, they created Thanksgiving.
Heaven knows, not every child gets this gift. Some children know the reality of a Thanksgiving without food, in a shelter, or on the streets. Some hide from uncles and cousins who have more selfish intent. Some make their own dinner, their own breakfast, their own lunches, wash their own clothing, give themselves baths, get themselves to school – and do the same for their siblings – because both parents are too drunk or too hung-over to manage it. Some live in fear of electrical cords and closets and lighters and bedposts because some grown-ups don’t know control.
I am not one of these children. I was given a childhood by family members who believed that magic was important enough to create, even when they weren’t sure it existed. I was lucky. I was blessed. I still am.
Now that I am older, my ‘child eyes’ are a precious connection to a time when I lived in innocence. They remind me how real magic is, even in a grown-up world. And when my magic is lost, my ‘child eyes’ help me go back, retrace, re-create it.
I cannot stand before a dead turkey, clutching a piece of dried corn on Thanksgiving Day and thank my family for a childhood granted. The words are too true. I cannot reveal something so fragile before we to dig in to sweet potato pudding and green bean casserole. Genuine sincerity blinds us with its shocking honesty. It isn’t easy or satisfying. It creates discomfort. I would crumble into a million pieces before the pie is served.
You see, we are, all of us, broken people and we come from broken places. At any given moment tragedy can strike, people can turn, and wars can begin. We don’t like being reminded of what we’ve lost, especially with turkey and all the trimmings cooling on the table.
Without my ‘child eyes,’ life could easily disintegrate into a hopeless mass of anxiety and I would have no magic with which light my way. A childhood given is to always know where home is, even if it’s not on a map. My ‘child eyes’ help me find my path back to who I am and who I was intended to be.
A child’s eyes look past the turmoil to see what is real. The truth is always there, you just need special eyes to see it.
What is the truth? No matter how broken or hurt or angry or afraid we are, we can come together around a meal, no matter how mediocre, and create Thanksgiving. We can. I’ve known it. When we come together in true intention, offer our gratitude and give of ourselves to feed others, we create the only magic this world has left.
We create a sanctuary, a place set apart. We create heaven.
This was my family’s gift to me, not at Christmas, but on Thanksgiving.
So here is where I make my thanks. I offer gratitude for my family who went before and who stand with me now. I am humbled by their undying faith that if they just showed up and tried to love each other, something good would happen. I carry that faith with me today because of their strength and devotion and selflessness.
Even now, knowing the reality of my childhood, I still see those Thanksgiving memories with my ‘child eyes.’
I see my tiny Nanny flitting around the house, cigarette perched between her fingers, laughing with her grandchildren. I see my father and my mother, young and strong, bringing dishes and stories to the table. I see my Aunt Kay fussing at my Uncle Herman as he pins giggling children to the ceiling for a tickle attack. I see hysterical aunts and uncles, entertaining us all with a bit of gossip or embarrassing family legends. I see cousins, playing games on the floor, poking and prodding each other into squeals and fits. I see my sister and I taking in as much magic as we can because we’ll have to wait another year until Thanksgiving again.
Through the smoke and heat and grease gravy, I can see it as clear as if it were yesterday.
It is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Thank you.
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