Learning the True Meaning of Thanks

While I was growing up, Thanksgiving often meant dressing up and going to Grandma’s house where we’d stuff ourselves full of turkey, mashed potatoes and lots of yummy treats. My mother and grandmother are from Oklahoma, and they knew the best secret ingredient for everything was butter, and lots of it.

My favorite has always been the homemade pumpkin pie that my mom took days to prepare. She used pumpkin from the real thing, and having tried it once, I’m very appreciate of how labor intensive that really is.

Up until my parents’ divorce, we had the typical family upbringing and the typical holiday meal. After that, my holiday, and that of my siblings, was spent one year with one parent and the next with the other. On the year we were with our dad, Thanksgiving took on a whole new meaning. I remember one year spending the day playing the new video game Pong while we ate something out of a can. Another year, dad took us camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains where we experienced below-zero temperatures at night.

Through the years I clung on to the old family traditions, learning to cook myself and really enjoying it, but our family spread further and further apart. My grandparents passed away, and eventually we were all far spread apart across the country. My mom moved to Virginia where my brother lived, and my sister was in the northeast. I was in the Rocky Mountains, while my father stayed on the West Coast.

I longed for the kind of Thanksgiving I had during my early years, with a house packed full of family and all types of delicious food in casserole dishes stretched across the table. I really missed, and still do, my grandmother’s green Jell-O, filled with fruit that we kids liked to pick out. We loved the Jell-O, but the fruit? Not so much.

Last year, a little over a month before Thanksgiving, I found myself living at my father’s after being stuck in a difficult financial situation (another story in itself). It was only temporary, but it wasn’t easy, especially living in my dad and stepmother’s living room with almost no privacy. The worst part might have been that the two were fighting incessantly about my little brother’s whereabouts and his situation.

My half-brother, Michael, was born 17 years after I was, and I never really got to know him well. By the age of 22, he’d built a successful business and owned an 80-acre ranch in the redwoods of Northern California. He is not only a genius, but he is a kind and generous person and, unfortunately, someone decided to take advantage of that fact.

At this time last year, Michael was missing, and no one had heard from him in months. The year before, he had lost everything. His business, his money, his girlfriend, all of it after being swindled. He became depressed, and then became addicted to heroin. Everyone was at a loss as to what to do, and I could hear my stepmother crying most nights.

I had hoped for a nice Thanksgiving dinner despite the situation, and we had some good food to eat, but the atmosphere was dark, and the meal was eaten in silence. Halfway through, the dogs began barking, and we heard someone turning the door handle. It was Michael. He was thin, and looked only the shell of the person he’d been, but he was home for the holiday, and was finally ready to start a new life.

That was the moment I learned the true meaning of Thanksgiving.


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