Thanksgiving 2019 After-Action Report

It was even better than last year.

I let myself get caught in that stupid War on Thanksgiving meme, which is exactly that, a meme. In a Facebook post I railed against whatever silly people are out there (and they are out there, but fewer in number than we’re led to believe) who would condemn this most American of holidays as a celebration of American Indian genocide. 

Turkeys are the only living things getting mass-slaughtered here, and we keep breeding them so we can kill them some more. In other news, a Thanksgiving miracle occurred: this little 10-pounder pictured here fed the entire family, and we still had a little leftover. I’m thankful for how we’ve learned to scale things down. Not everything has to — or should be — three to ten times as much as it needs to be.

I didn’t delete the post at first. Upon trimming some of the angrier, clichéd get-off-my-lawn-isms out, I thought the message became a lot more effective. I wanted to make my stand. You get so sick of all this sanctimonious bullyragging and...well, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? 

Properly chastened for my weakness, I undid that which shouldn’t have been done in the first place. When it comes to these provocations, a stoic response—that is to say, no response—is best. We are always offered invitations to anger in our mass media and make no mistake, the Internet is a big part of our mass media today. Decline those invitations.

And while we’re here, do you honestly know anyone who goes out of their way to bring up politics or other discordant subjects at the holiday feasting table? Again, I’m not saying there aren’t some idiots out there, but it’s rarer and far less severe than its been promoted to be. It’s a lot like that movie that came out in October that the media insisted was going to tap into some mythical white male resentment-rage. Shootings were likely to occur at screenings. It got to the point that memes were made in which “journalists” (this should always be in scare quotes) were begging for someone to bring a gun to the theater. They were actually trying to meme a shooting into existence. 

The entire point of the mass media in A.D. 2019 America is to keep you on edge, miserable and trembling for the next piece of shocking news. ‘Twas always thus, to one degree or another. It’s always been more or less fake, and if you don’t consider them the enemy, well, they sure as hell ain’t your friend, either. 

My Google game is off. I can find multiple copies of this comic, including animated .GIFs, but no mention of the creator. The author deserves commendation, as this accurately depicted the media zeitgeist of the last two weeks of September 2019. Good thing most people don’t pay much attention to the media anymore. Which makes me wonder why I bother...okay, so I am entertained by all the verbal slap fights. There’s that.

My succumbing to this frippery was mortifying and, thank God, the worst thing about the whole weekend. Once again, this Thanksgiving lasted all weekend, thanks to family.

This is what it looked like Thanksgiving evening after some of the snow had a chance to melt off. It’s all very nice and aesthetic when you’re on the inside of a warm house looking out. It’s another thing entirely if home and heart are empty, and it’s even colder and grayer in your soul. Been there, done that multiple years in a row in my 20s. I’ve had appendicitis; I’ve had multiple rogue wisdom teeth giving me trouble. The memory of such pain is abstract. The agony of loneliness over the holidays, though, still runs a shudder through me 30 years later.

I don’t have many people in my life but the ones who are there count. For the first time in a couple of years my daughter was able to take Thanksgiving Day off and drive down the night before, as opposed to the night of, the big day. We enjoyed riding around in the state-of-the-art hybrid vehicle she drove down in. That the car managed to make it through a mountain pass without trouble impressed me, as well as driving the 200 miles on only a quarter-tank of gasoline.

As usual, my daughter spent most of the time talking with her mother until her mother went to bed, and then she knocked on the door of my office. We had to forego the usual YouTube indulgences as my computer was shut down after overheating once again from the latest Windows 10 update. I don’t remember much of what we were talking about—alcohol was involved—but we wound the evening up in good spirits.

The sideboard, featuring the gingerbread house my son and his girlfriend made the week before.

It was just us at the table the next day and we were all we needed. 

The Big Three sides, the sine qua non of the Thanksgiving bird: homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows (the first to go altogether) and dressing.

Thanksgiving Friday was Thanksgiving Friday and nothing more. My wife and daughter did go indulge themselves at one of the two big thrift stores that had a sale, but that was the extent of it—and likely to have happened regardless of the date, because my wife and daughter enjoy such things. I stayed home, looked out the windows at the cold, snowy landscape, and thought of Thanksgivings past.

After a little more time visiting together my daughter left for Colorado Springs in mid-afternoon. The next morning my son left to see his girlfriend in Denver. My wife and I were empty-nesters again. Our hearts, however, were full. We’re grateful we have the kind of children we’re sorry to see leave, as opposed to wondering if they ever will leave. Not everyone gets that.

A potato shot of the tree that I’ll call art. Hello, Art.

When you see the Jingle Bell Rock Moose and the Christmas Bear, you know it’s on.

As with last year, the Thanksgiving vibe carried on throughout the entire weekend, even with the snow that fell three nights in a row starting on Wednesday, and even with the Christmas decorations my wife had put up days before because it was late in the month and the wintry gloom was getting to her. No one got angry with one another. No one had anything to say about politicians, current events, or the latest fad crusade. We had other concerns, namely, each other, and what we’re all up to.

In keeping with tradition, I celebrated my family, and took time out in private to mourn my dead. I can’t believe my brother Steven has been gone two years ago already this November. I spoke his name and those of sorely missed others aloud in remembrance.

When my son came home from Denver on Sunday night he ate the last of the mashed potatoes, which were all that remained of the leftovers. Thanksgiving 2019 was put to bed. Here’s a prayer we’re all back here for Christmas, and back again for many Thanksgivings and Christmases to come.

Watch it be sunny and snow-free this Christmas. Which suits me, given that my adult children are driving to see us. I don’t need a White Christmas that badly if it’s putting people I love at risk

The Thanksgiving That Lasted All Weekend

More Thanksgiving Thoughts from a Very Particular Year.

The day was notable for how quiet it was. Even my son, who suffers near-zero sentimentality for such things, asked what happened to The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. He was used to hearing the racket. It made him think of Thanksgiving.

I told him my troubles with the NBC app on the Amazon FireStick. He shrugged and went back to his room. If anyone could have solved this issue in less than 30 seconds it would be my technologically savvy and mechanically apt son. He was happy just to smell the turkey. We only have turkey this once every year. My wife and I have talked of having one at Christmas. We’ll see.

I’ve since learned that what we often call traditions are really mere habits we haven’t thought to break. Those habits are easier to break than we might think, too.

Actual mantelpiece decoration at our house. I cringe a little knowing you can see the seam in the wood laminate on the mantel, but I’ve got so many other things to fix on this house before replacing this.

This year, entire attitudes have been taken to the psychic curb. I knew I was going to come out the other end of my prostate removal with a changed outlook on things, but when I serendipitously found a pristinely recorded and edited video of the Rockettes’ segment in the parade—this proved impossible last year—I felt more silly than victorious in watching it.

Thanksgiving lasted all weekend, and so did the food. Barely.

The Rockettes normally appear just before the first hour’s break after the (traditionally!) excruciatingly awful Broadway musical segment, which, in recent years, has been going out of its way to be more excruciatingly, even intolerably awful.

It was such a relief to see those dancing ladies, usually after spending the better part of that hour coming in and out of the room dropping off the Christmas decor boxes from the shed. Now, via the magic and wonder of Internet video, I could watch at my leisure. 

I wish I hadn’t. It was probably well that I had done so, if only for the closure, but I wish I hadn’t.

It felt like a cheat to begin with. I realized they were basically the reward for those tinfoil-on-tooth-fillings twee musicals, and what was left outside of this context?

Dinner was just the wife and me. We coped splendidly.

To describe what I noticed with the dancers in my face on my office desk as opposed to the TV in the armoire would be cruel. Suffice it to say that the point was driven home that this parade was a mindless habit to be joyfully shed of, not a lost tradition to be mourned.

Or maybe not “joyfully” shed of. More like, “you enjoyed this once, it’s no big deal to you now.” I’ve been contemplating a blogpost on People Whose Work I Used To Admire, Now I Can Barely Stand Them. I could have some fun with that. Maybe later. Let’s just move on, and enjoy the quiet.

Shhhhhh....

My wife and I ate dinner. I went outside for a while to look at the sky and entertain the ghosts of my Thanksgivings past. We took a walk around the block just before the sun went down. We both expressed our thankfulness for living in a (so far, so good) quiet little town. The Christmas decorations were up. They’d been up for a week, maybe two; I hadn’t really paid attention. Everything was as it should be, though. Not merely quiet, but serene.

We got out just in time for last light. Hardly anyone was out on the road.

This display outside of the real estate office was a nice blend of Thanksgiving and Christmas decor.

I didn’t expect my daughter to show up until 10 p.m. but she arrived just before nine. This was the first time she’d been to see us in the Valley since Christmas, and, as always, the house lit up with her presence. Having all of our nuclear family under one roof, if only for two nights, supercharged the holiday air, and Thanksgiving 2018 established its dominion beyond President Lincoln’s designated fourth Thursday in November.

The only blue note here is that my wife’s and daughter’s work schedules did not sync, and my wife could only spend so much time visiting after work before going to bed, as she had an early wake-up. Some visiting was better than no visiting, however, and my daughter and I were able to do something we used to do back in Colorado Springs, namely, go Christmas shopping together. This was a tradition going way back that had been disrupted by my wife and I moving to the San Luis Valley.

We had to laugh, as we had everything finished within 15 minutes, and were meeting my son for lunch in downtown Alamosa. Ironically, the credit for this belongs to the destruction of a longstanding U.S. cultural tradition—stores remaining closed on Thanksgiving Day until just before dawn the day after. In the past few years, in the face of sadly feeble social media protests, retailers have opened their doors for “doorbuster” discounts at 6 p.m. the evening before. Therefore, Walmart was downright sleepy around midday the day after Thanksgiving. 

My daughter and I agree the term “Black Friday” sounds like a massacre, hence my avoidance of the expression. Anyway, thanks to Thanksgiving no longer being held sacrosanct by American consumers, we at least get Thanksgiving Friday back.

We had to walk to make room for the pie. You know what kind we’re talkin’ about here.

Something felt eerily familiar as we settled into our table at the local brewhouse, and I realized it was just my son, daughter, and myself, just like old times when I was the stay-at-home parent and my wife deployed. Of course, they’re all grown now, and paying the old man’s tab. But that easy, comfortable feeling was there. It’s helped so much that, parental authority dynamic aside, we’ve always generally enjoyed each other’s company. Of course, the parental authority thing has been long out the window. I don’t miss it. I’m just so glad they made the decisions they made, and they actually enjoy visiting with their parents, as opposed to it being some hateful chore under guise of “tradition.”

Emily stayed another night, which carried the Thanksgiving vibe clear into Sunday, hence the title of this post. Here it is, almost Thanksgiving 2019, and I’m finally winding this thing up. Better late than never, am I right? It’s so late it’s contemporary all over again. Anyway, I’m thankful Thanksgiving 2018 worked out like it did.  The children grow up, and you put away the things you once enjoyed. But, for my part, family and love remained.

These shelves were empty by Monday evening. 

What Thanksgiving Is As I Grow Older

I’m not presuming to speak for anyone else.

Thanksgiving Day in the central San Luis Valley unfolded into a classic late November afternoon. Bands of gray clouds striped the high, thin film of haze over the sun, and I thought of how October, for all of its morbid associations, is full of color and life compared to the quiet, gray-brown death that is November. The leaves are long gone from the trees. As for those leaves left on the ground, what were once vibrant yellows and reds are dull, crumbling sepia memories, to the dust soon returned.

My wife and I had eaten our dinner. Our son, never one for eating with people, was still sleeping off his intense work week as a trade apprentice. Our daughter would arrive well after dark, having worked that day in Manitou Springs three hours away. Standing alone in the front yard, I recognized the colors and shapes in the sky, the pallor of the sun as the same from 1,800 miles and four decades away. I said “Annelle and Uncle Charley” three times, as if saying so would make them appear. Some of my best childhood memories were from going to their farm in Hartsville, South Carolina, for Thanksgiving in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

As the sun disappeared behind the thicker clouds on the horizon I raised a glass for my late cousin and one-time best friend Ben, who would have been 58 years old that day. Ben’s younger brother Leslie died last year, and the last of one of the finest families to ever walk the Earth was no more. Uncle Joe passed in 2007, Aunt Margie in 2013. Geniuses of mind and spirit, they took an entire way of thinking and doing things with them as they died. I’d need a book to properly eulogize them. 

This month also marks one year since my brother-of-another-mother and one-time best friend Steven Mock passed. I still can’t believe he’s gone. I really wish he was here to read what there is of my third novel. There wouldn’t be a first novel if he hadn’t had given it to me with both critical barrels after reading my prototype first chapter of Bleeding Kansas in 2012.

I’ve got a lot of people I’m missing hard this year. If I’ve had blue moments thinking of the people I miss—and I’ve had, and still do—this is a feature, not a bug of my holiday season. As Dickens observed in his essay, “What Christmas Is As We Grow Older,” we exclude nothing and no one. That means we accept the sadness with the joy. We allow ourselves to mourn our dead even as we cherish those still among us. 

The trick, as always, is in the balance. For instance, I’ve found it’s far easier to mourn silent, invisible dead than it is to cherish living beings with their own things to do and say. The living require so much more of us than a review of fading memories and that overwhelming sadness that comes when you know you’ll never see or speak with them again.

Therefore, you acknowledge those absent loved ones and move on already. There are people downstairs who came a long way to see you. Go see them. While you still can.

I’m sorry to say it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that I’ve come to fully appreciate the stated meaning of Thanksgiving and take it to heart. It was in this year in particular that I finally came to understand on the most essential, sub-molecular level that I might only have so many of these annual observations left. I’ve belabored that point often enough in my Christmas essays, but it’s hitting home all over the calendar for me now.

I could say more. I might say more. I started a memoir of my times going to see Annelle and Uncle Charley, but I realized it was going on too long for online posting purposes, and, as of this writing, I still have a novel to finish.

So, moving right along, then....

I’ve always found this a most haunting image. Is this the night before Thanksgiving? Or are these the survivors gathered the night after, wondering when their turn might yet come?

Thanksgiving Thoughts 2018

Season’s Greetings from the Colorado High Country.

I may have complained about this last year, but this year I’m calling an official end to an old tradition in my household, namely The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If it were as easy as clicking an app and getting live streaming (we’re longtime cord-cutters living in a high, semi-remote valley with no broadcast TV) we’d get all the joyful, over-commercialized noise that comes with the event.

No, first the NBC app needed updating. Second, I had to enter an activation code on my computer upstairs. I did so, signing in via Facebook, giving NBC my e-mail address, etc. You’d think they’d be happy with beaming in the commercials to one more household but, no, let’s collect some information!

And for the information they took from me, I got absolutely nothing. Well, another activation code, anyway. Restarting the app got me another activation code to enter.

For all I know there was an easy fix to this I was overlooking. Maybe I needed to restart the FireTV stick, but it’s already irritating enough that I have to take it out and re-insert it into the side of the television every time I want to watch something. That apps for streaming live television require updating, that I have to enter in codes from my computer, that I can’t simply turn on the television and watch something without jumping through hoops—forget it, then. Just forget it.

I try not to be angry about it, but I do miss all that stupid noise, however stupid. We were even getting into the dog show that followed the parade when we lived in Colorado Springs. It was something we had on in the background while waiting for the turkey to cook.

Now it’s just quiet. Maybe I’ll put on some music later.

I love how this display outside of the real estate office combines symbols of the adjacent seasons.

I’ve often reflected as I pace the living area downstairs that, in a way, we’ve brought this 109-year-old house full circle. Radio wasn’t even a thing when this house was built. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there were some broadcast television stations in the San Luis Valley when television came to rule our cultural schedules in the 1950s through the 1980s. But with enough people willing to pay a fortune for cable and satellite service, why bother paying to maintain a broadcast affiliate station for a vast area (between the size of Connecticut and Massachusetts) with only 40,000 people in it? 

So instead of the sonic and visual wallpaper of television in the background, we have the curtains open to the sunlight. I wonder how many sunsets were missed in this house because the families living here had the curtains drawn and the TV on. It wasn’t that long ago that the days of the week were defined by what show was broadcast that day. 

I have to keep reminding myself that this is a good thing because I honestly do miss the noise sometimes. There is a feeling of connectedness, too, that’s gone missing. Poor me, I’ll have to depend on my usual websites to find out what Hot New Gotta Have Thing people are going to fight over in the stores this year. 

I’ll get over it. Like so many things I’ve been denied in my life, the denial becomes a blessing for which I am eventually profusely thankful. 

That’s a wrap. Thank you, Thanksgiving 2018.

Thanksgiving Weekend 2014 Roundup

My college football team lost their big rivalry game. If that’s the worst that happens this Thanksgiving Weekend, I’m happy.

I sincerely hope this is the last Thanksgiving I observe in Colorado Springs, because I don’t see how we could possibly top it. It was the first Thanksgiving in which an adult child came to visit—and the one still at home is 18 and in his senior year of high school. This is a continuum of transitions here. If everything works out, I will be in a completely different situation this time next year. 

That pointed lump in the middle is Pikes Peak as seen with max zoom on my Canon PowerShot. Please buy my books so I can afford a proper SLR!

Of course, everything “working out” depends on how well I work. I have to write a third and final book while promoting the first two. I’ve learned the hard way I can’t favor either task over the other. If I’m not tweaking or writing for The Wrong Kind of Dead, I need to blog and tweet like that’s all I do for a living.

It’s all about time management. No time like right now to get my New Year’s Resolutions underway. It really does take me a while to get the momentum going, and I’d like to be doing it like it’s no big deal come 1 January 2015.

One sustained gust of wind bisected this cloud, There was a weird, orangey glow to the sunset the Friday after Thanksgiving.

She was a beauty.

Meanwhile, I’m grateful for who and what I have. The spirit of Thanksgiving 2014 rides with honor into the mists of memory. If you’re reading this, I’m grateful for you, too. I’ve got a king-hell grim and violent excerpt from The Wrong Kind of Dead to share in a couple of days. Stay tuned. Or subscribe, using that button on left. Whatever works for you.

Christmas is on deck, and in full effect. There is so much to do, and I’m glad for it. Happy December, everyone!