I may have told this family story, but it bears repeating.
When I was about 9 years old and deep into holiday
traditions and clinging to the magic of believing in Santa Claus even though
the evidence disproved it, I looked forward to the traditional turkey dinner
for Thanksgiving. As far as I was concerned, you could have whatever you wanted
for Christmas like that delicious Christmas ham roasted all day in the over
with pineapple held in place with whole cloves, and a juicy cherry in the
middle of each pineapple circle or even a Christmas goose, I didn’t care. But
Thanksgiving dinner was a whole other matter; it was a turkey and stuffing or
it just wasn’t Thanksgiving. Just throw down your napkin and call it over and
done if there was no turkey.
Well, Pop, who had a love for roast beef which we had
every Sunday, decided this particular Thanksgiving that roast beef would be on
our table instead of turkey. No stuffing, no cranberry sauce (we always forgot
it anyway, but that’s not the point), no candied yams, just the same ol’ Sunday
dinner of a Yankee pot roast of beef, potatoes, and carrots. Phooey! What a
terrible idea. Thanksgiving was ruined as far as I was concerned. I didn’t care
if the Pilgrims would have loved roast beef as Pop tried to convince me, I was
ready to leave home.
I hung my head in shame at school when the kids talked
about their Thanksgiving turkey and all those delicious fixin’s. They would be appalled
if they knew my family was having a Thanksgiving roast beef. See? The words don’t
even flow together the way Thanksgiving turkey does.
I was furious and sad at the same time. Even going to the
Thanksgiving parade uptown could not cheer me up. I sat in misery through the
entire Thanksgiving dinner and made sure my disappointment was known. I’m
pretty sure I made everybody’s holiday dismal.
We never had roast beef at Thanksgiving again. The thing
is, all these years later with some wisdom and life experiences we come to have
with age, I think about that turkeyless Thanksgiving. There are many people in
this world that didn’t have turkey, not even a chicken on their table to
celebrate Thanksgiving. The whole idea of Thanksgiving is to give thanks and
gratitude for whatever we have. As so many kids, I was self-involved and lacked
insight into the feelings and situations in other people’s lives. There were
probably kids in my school who weren’t having turkey because they couldn’t
afford a turkey. All I cared about then was what I thought I would be missing
without a grain of gratitude or thankfulness. I know better now. Lesson
learned.
