Today, I can almost smell the enticing aroma of my Gramma Lena's Italian kitchen, circa 1970. For me,Thanksgivings gone by include memories of dinners that resembled the iconic Norman Rockwell picture above...that is, if you add LOUD voices, screams at a TV set during Lions football games and Italian bickering between my grandparents. For my brother and me, Thanksgiving was a blur of going from one relatives' house to the next, satisfying BOTH sides of the Fritz and Battistelli families.
First stop was always Gramma Lena's, where we ate earlier and we cousins played simply, by jumping off Gramma & Grampa's porch into their bushes. OK truth be told, the BOYS jumped, while I, being the only granddaughter, loved being in Gramma's kitchen as she, my mom & aunts carried what seemed like endless plates of food to the dining room table.
I was the "lucky" kid who got to sit at the "grown-up " table; for a few years I can even remember the phone books placed underneath my bottom to raise me up. Every 10 minutes, as I sat with the grown-ups, an aunt or uncle would get up from the dinner table to check in on the boys. Eager to see what sort of hi jinx was taking place in Gramma's kitchen, I'd often glance toward the kitchen to see what "those crazy kids" were up to. Though I'd NEVER admit it to my male cousins, I silently wished I was in there having what sounded like tons of fun. Food fights. Laughter. Moments of complete silence followed by obnoxious yet funny sounds and uproars of laughter. There was probably even a bit of mockery of me as my cousins made fun of their older "princess" cousin seated with the adults. Nonetheless, I got to sit in the dining room as the adults raised their glasses of wine and talked about current events, reports of other family members' lives and laughed at jokes that made absolutely no sense to me while my cousins made jokes that I TOTALLY would have gotten!
Meanwhile, grown up me....even at age eight, I sat with my cloth napkin neatly folded on my lap and followed my mom for cues as to which fork to use with which entree. I held up my pinkie as I drank my Ginger Ale (it's a Detroit thing) and I listened to the kids playing in the kitchen, sometimes even rolling my eyes like the adults did, despite my desire to be with them. Even as the "boys" grew into young men, I still sat at the grown-up table and they opted for the kitchen. By then, it was more of a male family tradition.
Today, whenever we all get together for holidays, they joke around and sometimes when we're all together I almost feel like I'm outside of an inside joke, but I love that they have that sense of constancy to fall back upon no matter which direction life has taken them.
When we moved here to Chattanooga in 2010, I took EVERY excuse to run home to Detroit. Our first Thanksgiving here, living in a little apartment until we could move into our current house, most of my cooking gear was still in storage so we ate at a high-end restaurant overlooking the Tennessee River. I cried all the way home, fearing our tight family ties were forever severed.
Today, I am spending my second Thanksgiving, ever, away from my family. But wait...I DO have a family. It's my OWN family. We live HERE, in Chattanooga, now. Yes, I will miss being with Dad and my brother's family. However, something has happened in the last two years. My daughter is now a second-grader. She has started to build her own little roots here. She has friends here now and so do my husband and I.
Do I get misty-eyed when I think that my daughter will someday never have the same KIND of "Rockwell" memories of her childhood I did, of annually coming together to give thanks under the same roof as her cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents? Sure. Knowing many other children are in this same position, with grandparents living miles away, comforts me.
Maybe Rockwell, himself, knew this when he made his famous "Freedom from Want" portrait, which ironically first graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post March 6, 1943. Maybe he painted it for posterity, capturing it as a moment in time we shall never again know....maybe he knew as life rolled along, families would spread out across the country....and eventually, even the globe.
Perhaps he hoped we might come together each year to replicate it. Either way, we can all still make our own Rockwell moments to this very day. It's easy. In homes across the country, travel-weary family members are seated on couches and at tables everywhere. There are likely still kids' tables...the traditions live on.
Even if we are hundreds of miles from our family today, our hearts and prayers are still with them as distinctly as if we were seated besides them. Thanks to technology, we can talk, text, skype and enjoy social networking sites that make us feel as if we are there in real time. You see, we are STILL there. We can all grumble about how much technology has lessened our ability to communicate but for those of us living hours away from loved ones, it can be a beautiful thing.
Perhaps he hoped we might come together each year to replicate it. Either way, we can all still make our own Rockwell moments to this very day. It's easy. In homes across the country, travel-weary family members are seated on couches and at tables everywhere. There are likely still kids' tables...the traditions live on.
Even if we are hundreds of miles from our family today, our hearts and prayers are still with them as distinctly as if we were seated besides them. Thanks to technology, we can talk, text, skype and enjoy social networking sites that make us feel as if we are there in real time. You see, we are STILL there. We can all grumble about how much technology has lessened our ability to communicate but for those of us living hours away from loved ones, it can be a beautiful thing.
To you and yours, from me and mine, I wish you all a bountiful Thanksgiving during which you create magical memories, no matter which table at which you are seated. ;)
