Giving Thanks For Thanksgiving

Several people I know claim that Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday. Better even than Christmas! I think I understand why. Thanksgiving is about lots of good food and family get-togethers, with none of the pressure of decorating a tree and buying gifts. Thanksgiving is usually relaxed and comfortable and not at all frenetic. It is a delightful prelude to all the excitement and traditions of Christmas, but absent the angst and painful nostalgia often attendant on that holiday. Unless it is marred by travel nightmares, Thanksgiving has the potential of being laid-back, slowly savored, and very satisfying. And although other countries may celebrate a holiday somewhat like Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving itself is uniquely American. Just ask the Pilgrims. I love anything and everything that is uniquely American.

Earlier this week I was reminiscing with my daughter about both Thanksgiving in general and a certain Thanksgiving of which I have vivid memories. That would be 44 Thanksgivings ago: November 28, 1963. This Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2007, will mark the 44th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- an event that shook America to its core just six days before Thanksgiving. I was six years old; I remember being sent home from school in the middle of the day and finding my mother sitting in front of the color television set in my grandmother's living room, crying. There was a lot of crying over the next three days as the President's body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda. Then came the day when the riderless horse pranced along the funeral route to a dolorous drumbeat, and little John-John stepped forward and gave his heartbreaking salute to his dead father.

My sister and I were once again living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that fall, in a tiny house that our mother had rented for the three of us. It was one of the many times during my childhood when we were on our own with our mother, who had separated briefly from our stepfather. This occurrence would repeat itself many times over the years until the final time they split in the early '70s, and I don't remember any particulars of this "father"less interlude except that in my mind's eye I can see our neat little living room. I can see the Sunday night in February of 1964 when, bathed and clad in cotton pajamas, I sat at the end of the couch to watch The Ed Sullivan Show as I always did on Sunday night. Hoping for a routine by my beloved Topo Gigio, instead I got the Fab Four. I still remember loving the songs "Till There Was You" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."

But less than three months before the world was rocked by The Beatles, the world was rocked by the incredibly brutal public assassination of a president. The Zapruder film is available for viewing today on hundreds of Web sites, but back then only the authorities had seen it; the general public could only whisper about what had been seen and documented in Dealey Plaza and on the grassy knoll. The Warren Commission was established a week after the assassination, but it would be ten months before they would report that they believed Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. My daughter asked my husband and me this week how the assassination of President Kennedy compared to the events of September 11, 2001, in terms of how it shocked and upset us. "It was about the same," my husband and I agreed. And although I was a first-grader, I still remember the fear and horror of those days in November of 1963. I remember all the tears that were shed by the grownups, and knowing that something had gone horribly and permanently wrong.

But at my grandmother's lovely home in the suburbs of Baton Rouge on that warm and sunny Thanksgiving Day in 1963, I seem to recall that we tried to put the sadness of the previous week behind us. Scads of my mother's kinfolk were assembled for the delicious meal that would be prepared by my grandparents. In addition to Mamaw and Papaw and my mother and sister, there would have been a plethora of aunts, uncles, and cousins. I remember that the children sat outside that day, at my grandmother's black iron patio furniture, to eat our meal. There was moist, hot turkey, cornbread dressing made from scratch and drenched in giblet gravy (with hardboiled egg slices floating on top), sweet potato casserole with pecans and marshmallows tucked down inside, ambrosia salad, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls ... and each of us got our own "little" Coke in a bottle, frosty cold from the cooler. There was probably plenty of pie, too, although I don't remember that part. No one went hungry; that much is for sure.

This Thursday our family will be together in northwest Ohio, where my husband was born and raised. We, along with my husband's brother and sister, are now the aunts and uncles as well as being grandparents in our own right. All of our children and our children's children (my goodness are we ever getting old!) constitute the cadre of cousins, and some are themselves aunts and uncles! The more things change, the more they stay the same. The meal will not be exactly like the one I was always given on Thanksgiving as a child, but it will be good and there will be plenty of it. I've come to crave the cranberry salad made to perfection each year by my mother-in-law. I'll miss having cornbread dressing and giblet gravy the way my grandmother always made it, but maybe I can get my mom to make some for me before the new year.

Assassinations and terrorist plots aside, America with its remarkable history has a great deal to be thankful for not only on Thanksgiving Day, but every day. And I am thankful for Thanksgiving, and the opportunities it affords to remember all there is that we should never forget. I plan to purposely count all my blessings as our family wends its way northward on I-75 this Wednesday in three separate vehicles. It will give me something to do as we anxiously cover the miles to Grandma and Grandpa's house which will be warm and inviting, full of laughter, and redolent with the unique smells of Thanksgiving. I'll enjoy every minute because when I get back home, it will be time to decorate the tree and get busy buying gifts.