Home, where my music’s playin’
Home, where my love lies waitin’
Silently for me.”---Paul Simon
Home is many things to many people. Home is where you are now or where you spent the majority of your life or where you made new discoveries every day of your adolescence. Home is where you carried your bride across the threshold, where your children were born, where great plans were made and hopes were dashed, where you rose again from the ashes. Home is were you planted your garden, where Maizie the feral cat showed up to bum a saucer of milk, the place you fled to when the sky was falling. Home, all of them, but not that home, the winner and world champion of all homes….the one you grew up in.
No, that home was full of mothers and fathers and grandmas and sisters and irritating brothers. Full of laughter and shouting and intoxicating cooking aromas and Thanksgiving guests popping in and out while busy females darted about wielding plates filled with the blessings of Fall. Full of opinionated men drinking ceremonial nectar and watching football and passing on decades of accumulated knowledge to preoccupied youngsters obsessed with spinning through the house at the speed of light. Ruled over, of course, by the Queen of Thanksgiving, that feisty grandmother with an outsized ladle and a penchant for order. “Cut it out, Billy, or you’ll get no turkey leg!” The Ultimate Weapon.
We have never forgotten that home, and that is why we’re getting into planes, trains and automobiles to visit it once more, why we’re willing to slog through impossible airports and choking highways and knee-deep blizzards and raving stewardess-whackers to get back there, to relive the emotional past, to get another taste of the Magic. It’s not the same, of course, but it’s as close as we can get and that will have to do.
One of the saddest punishments in life is to return to the scene of past glories and find the domicile of our youth not even there, perhaps replaced by a bleak vacant lot, a shocking circumstance that leaves us deeply chagrined, gasping for air, momentarily wondering if our past has been disqualified. Grandmother’s birdbath still stands like a sad sentinel in the grassless back yard, but where’s the front porch we played on, the cellar door we climbed in and out of….where are the bedrooms in which we stored our precious treasures of yesteryear? All gone, victims of the Inevitable Muncher called Progress. Don’t worry, though we still have those Kodak pictures, right?
Where once we were the pesky children crawling all over our grandparents’ laps, now we are the lap providers. Where once we saw a bright and shiny future reaching out before us, now we wistfully imagine one for our descendants. Where once we were full of anticipation and aspiration and fear and excitement, now we have seen and done much of what we wanted to see and do and we are comfortable with our achievements and content to grease the wheels for future generations. It goes round and round and round in the circle game. Each Thanksgiving is another step along the path.
When You Are Very Young
When you are very young, Thanksgiving is a whirlwind, a blur of houseguests and delectable food and television sports and the effusive results of too much drinking. There is football at ten-o’clock in the morning, for crying out loud, a half-mile away at Lawrence Memorial Stadium, which is dolled up like no other time. There is a parade of relatives traipsing through the yard, wandering through the house, sitting on the porch, each carrying the requisite alcoholic beverage that magically turns them into more cheerful beings. There are chatty adults remarking on your precipitous growth, patting you on the head, occasionally looking for that dreaded smooch. There are scores of other kids available to hijack and toss the old pigskin around with. There might even be one of those special girls, the kind you wouldn’t talk to on a bet but find yourself thinking about for the next two months.
When you are very young (but not as young), you may find yourself off in some faraway place---college, a job, an army post---where Thanksgiving is celebrated in muted tones and with the requisite basics but lacking the oomph, the verve, the lust for the season you are used to. If you happen to be, say, 1000 miles from home with a thin bankroll in a college town like Stillwater, Oklahoma, where everyone has temporarily fled back to the farm, Thanksgiving becomes a pale shadow of its former self. As much as you appreciate striking out on your own, investigating the rewards of independence and choosing which way you will travel, you are surprised by the loneliness of the day, the quiet, the intrusive memories of jollier times. Isn’t there an elderly lady around here who needs a smooch?
A Little Romance
Thanksgiving looked a little bleak that year. Fresh out of a ten-year marriage, your workplace closed for the day, you thought you’d read a book, watch some football, have a solo meal at one of the few restaurants still functioning on a day when everyone really prefers to eat at home. Then, just before the holiday, a friend drops in and asks you for a favor. A woman associate he has known for years is visiting for a couple of days, looking for succor in a time of sadness. On Thanksgiving Day, he must be elsewhere so perhaps you can drop over to visit, maybe escort her to dinner. Sure, sounds nice you say, hoping she won’t look like The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
She doesn’t. She looks more like the Madonna of Notre Dame. Her name is Laurie. You talk, laugh over your common dilemma, get along well and propose an idiosyncratic notion. “Let’s go to the beach tomorrow. We’ll have the place all to ourselves.”
The proffer is received well and plans are quickly settled. Thanksgiving Day arrives with a cloudless sky and morning temperatures in the high fifties. It will be 75 degrees by noon, then 80 two hours later, perfect St. Augustine weather. Laurie proves to be a good companion. You cruise over the St. John’s River bridge in Palatka, turn east and head for potato country….Hastings and the wonderfully-named Spuds, which is always good for a joke or two. Laurie laughs easily, swings her head just right, has perfect teeth. You prefer long hair on a woman but on this one it wouldn’t seem right. She’s loose, lithe, athletic, moves like a creature who lives outside.
Lunch is a problem. In these times, not even McDonald’s is open on Thanksgiving. You settle on a couple of those sealed turkey sandwiches from a 7-11, amused by the irony. Where elsewhere there is feasting, here there is slim pickin’s on white. Nobody cares. You walk around ancient St. Augustine, the unchanging miracle, and tease each other about foolish things. Eventually she holds your hand. It’s her idea and the timing is just right. An ineffable sensation passes through you, one not often duplicated, almost crippling. Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?
There is almost noone on the beach at Anastasia Island. An old couple, probably in their eighties, is wrestling unsuccessfully with a couple of beach chairs on the long walk to the surf. You go over, easily pick up the chairs and haul them down to the shore, flirting with the elderly woman as you walk. Laurie looks at you with a new expression, her eyes softer, maybe the tiniest bit moist. It’s not often one gets to be a hero with such facility. The chairs are placed exactly as instructed and the nice lady says you look like the perfect couple. “There’s just something indescribable about you two,” she smiles. Noone could have said it better.
You drive down the coast south to Daytona for a traditional dinner with all the foofaraw. The champagne is exceptional and very expensive. You decide to spend the night there. Inevitably, these perfect matches wind up with less than ideal grand finales. She is more modest than expected, he is in too much in a hurry, etc. Not this time. They have an overused expression for the experience in tawdry romance novels….”The Angels Sang.” This time they brought the whole orchestra.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Deb Peterson tell us all you need is love, but we know that’s not true. Sometimes, for so many reasons, you are anchored to one place and she to another. When you are swept away by the moment, your emotions grab the ball and start running downfield. You start telling yourself anything is possible, twisting what you know is true into a false tale with an unlikely ending. But by now you have been around awhile, acted rashly on impulse more than once and you know the ropes better than you once did. Laurie does, too.
The time for parting next day is not easy. No promises are made because both of you know that life inevitably gets in the way of promises. There is one final perfect kiss. Tears become involved, tender touching, the strong temptation to do something foolish, something which will inevitably fail. Wisdom prevails. Laurie climbs onto the plane at the tiny airport, looks back and waves, smiling through tears. You wave back, almost struck down by regret. It’s the absolutely perfect ending. The movies couldn’t have done it better. Well, maybe once. Godspeed, darlin’, wherever you are. We’ll always have Thanksgiving.
Celebrate the day, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
