As a kid and even as a young adult in my 20s, holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter were easy. All I had to do was show up.
My mom, aunts and grandma – and, later on, my two older sisters – made it look pretty easy, especially since I wasn’t paying much attention. They always had an abundance of food – even turkey, which I just flat-out refused to eat until my 30s.
I don’t have any firm memories of holiday gatherings on my dad’s side. Grandma was 80 by the time I was born, and Grandpa had died years before that. I was by far the youngest of their 16 grandkids.
I do remember holiday gatherings on my mom’s side. I was the second youngest of 13 cousins, so there were a lot of people at those gatherings, including aunts, uncles and cousins with their spouses and young ones. I remember joyous holidays there.
By the time I was a teen, the big family gatherings ended, and dinner involved just my parents and two older sisters at our house. I remember rolling out of bed to wonderful smells of turkey and dressing and pies coming from the kitchen and eating a late breakfast while watching the floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
As a young reporter in Park Hills, I opted out of Thanksgiving celebrations. To me, it just wasn’t worth the drive to my parents’ house in Cape Girardeau (I know, shame on me) to load up on food and then drive back feeling incredibly miserable and still miserable the next morning when I was trying to meet the 9 a.m. Black Friday deadline.
The holiday became more hectic when I joined the Inserra family with three sets of grandparents. When our kids were younger, we often made our way to three houses over the course of Thanksgiving weekend. Two of those included back-to-back turkey dinners with all the sides on Thanksgiving Day! Imagine all the delicious food, but also imagine the misery of trying to eat all that delicious food.
In the past few years, as the oldest kids became adults and my husband and I felt less inclined to drive to a bunch of places, we sometimes chose to have our own gathering at our house or at our oldest daughter’s home.
Thanksgiving hits me differently this year as a 47-year-old stepmom/wife/daughter/daughter-in-law/bonus daughter-in-law/sister/aunt who has two children now living on the other side of the state, a son often serving overseas in the Army, two aging parents in Cape Girardeau and aging in-laws in the St. Louis area.
For a month, my husband, Todd, has been nagging me about what I want to do for Thanksgiving. Like everyone in the family, they just want an answer from me. I can’t seem to give them one.
My dad is 89 and my mom is 83. It occurs to me that every holiday with them is a blessing.
We are currently trying to transition Dad into a nursing home, and I expect it could even happen between Nov. 12, the day I write this column, and Nov. 20, the day the newspaper comes out.
Dad’s Alzheimer’s has been progressing for the past two or three months. By progressing, I mean he has gone from the middle stages to the late stages of this horrible disease.
I guess it really registered with me when Mom messaged us daughters a month ago that Dad couldn’t figure out how to play our favorite card game, pinochle, that night. For the past 20 years, Mom and Dad have played a game of some sort together each night. They had a rotation – for example they’d play pitch one night, euchre one night, pinochle one night, Phase 10 one night and dominoes on Mom’s least favorite night. I believe those games have really kept Dad’s disease from advancing as quickly.
Some games fell off the rotation as his disease progressed. I wanted to believe pinochle would remain on the list, but now it’s pretty much down to Crazy Eights and dominoes. He’s still a pro at dominoes.
So back to Thanksgiving. Getting all my kids (except the one overseas) together for Thanksgiving means a trip to the opposite side of the state from Cape Girardeau where my parents are.
I must accept that I can’t be in two places at once, and that Thanksgiving is just one day and that any day can be a day to sit down with family and celebrate that you are together.
At the time of this writing, I have still not made a decision about what to do about Thanksgiving. But, we will figure it out as we always do. It might mean splitting up the weekend or it could be celebrating one place one weekend and the next place the following weekend. I really want to see all the kids. I’m just an emotional mess as I think about my dad leaving the home he’s known for 60 years. But, I’m very thankful for every moment I have with the ones I love.
So even if I am a mess, happy Thanksgiving everyone. Take a moment, or hey, how about a day, to enjoy those around you.