Thanks to Thanksgiving

Mimi came first (my 'princess', my love, the one who calls me 'Baba') on Monday.

Josh and the girls came on Tuesday from Baltimore. Morgan, Emma and Tegan flowed out of the car and flowed over us again and again until they left with Cathy on Saturday (she came on the train on Friday since her father was sick and she wanted to help her mother).

Tim came on Wednesday, giving joy to Mimi and us all (the 'girls' most of all since they are 'uncle Tim groupies').

On Thursday John came first with the deep fryer for tiny onions (for Tim since he's allergic to shell fish) and oysters for the rest of us.

Then came Jack and Sherry and Robbie from New Haven (Robbie from the left coast home for Thanksgiving) We've known them all since 1980, Robbie growing up with Josh and Mimi.

And we ate and ate, as you should on Thanksgiving. And we toasted Sumi (Josh and Cathy's dog--Cathy's before Josh--who had been with us so many Thanksgivings and died in August at 15 or so) and I toasted them all because they are the people I love most in the world. Truly.

How many times do you get to sit at a table with 12 of the people you love most in the world and eat a meal with them. I was sorry Cathy wasn't there to make it 13.

How rare is that? How wondrous? How wild and truly blessed?

I was deeply Thankful this Thanksgiving and I thank Thanksgiving for that opportunity.

(Bela did nip at Robbie as an outsider, but we won't let that detract from the magic....)

run, don't walk...

I saw the second Hunger Games movie this week. It made me reread "Catching Fire" which I did in about 24 hours, even with granddaughters here!

The movie 'watches' like the book 'reads'--which is downhill all the way at a speed that is just beyond comfortable.

And Jennifer Lawrence, well, what can you say about her?

One thing I can say is this: she is not a 'sex symbol' in any way though she is beautiful and sensual and only 23. What she is is this, a girl women would want to have as a friend and men as well. She is like 'the girl next door' melded into 'the friend you want to have'.

She is a remarkable actress. Probably the best since Merell Streep and a decade younger that when we first met Merell.

Read the book. See the movie. Preferably in that order--but the movie is so faithful to the book it would most likely enhance your enjoyment of the novel as the novel enhances your enjoyment of the movie. Just do it, ok?

(Also saw Frozen with the girls and Josh and Bern. Absolutely 'must see', even if you're an old coot like me. Great animation, profound and wondrous moral, astonishing story. Go see a movie or two soon--my recommends are the two above....)

Where I'm from....

Thanksgiving and the day after is over. Sherry and Jack and John and Robbie came and went. Tim and Mimi left today. Kathy came today and will leave tomorrow with the girls--her dad has been in hospital and kept her in Baltimore until today--Josh will stay for his 20th High School Reunion on Saturday (how did that happen...that a child of mine graduated from High School two decades ago???)

For some reason today I've been pondering where I was 'from' and how that formed me in so many ways. Part of it was because the people around me, except for Bern, were 'from' other places and formed much differently than I was.

I'm from West Virginia, the southern most county of McDowell. Those who are 'from there' say it in 2 1/2 syllables--MACK-Dow-ell. One of the few words we say (those of us from the Appalachian place) that doesn't have the accent on the last syllable. We say "tor-na-DO" and "Merry Christ-MAS"
and end all sentences on an upbeat that makes the simplest thing sound like a question: 'lovely day to-DAY" we'd say.

Where I grew up, when you met someone you'd ask them "Where are you from?"

And they'd say 'Pageton' or 'Welch' or 'Crosier Holler' or 'Little Creek' and you'd know volumes about them just from that--who their 'people' were and how they showed up in the world. Knowing where someone was 'from' was knowing them pretty well.

In New England I have to remind myself to ask strangers "what do you do?' because that's the operative question up here.

Being 'from' West Virginia, especially McDowell county is formative in a myriad of ways. First of all, you don't think you're as good as most people and you enter any encounter as an underdog. Secondly, you have to be twice as smart to be noticed. Thirdly, you have trouble dealing with people who are 'well off'. It's just like that. Really. And always.

Being an Appalachian means starting with a 4 handicap. It just does.

In just less than seven decades I've pared some of that away, but in some ways yet, I'm just a boy "From" McDowell County, with all that entails. Try as you might, where I come from, you can't escape 'where you come from'....

I'm OK with that, it's just the way it is.

Monday and Mimi

The Thanksgiving holiday began early when Mimi came from New York on the train at noon today.

We'll have her alone until Josh and the girls arrive tomorrow evening.

Mimi alone is devoutly to be desired. She is so much fun. Bern and Mimi and I watched 'The Voice' together. We talk about it almost weekly since all three of us are huge fans, but watching it with her was a joy.

Bern and Mimi both have almost perfect pitch. She certainly got that gene from Bern! They can tell when someone is flat or sharp and when harmony is off. I actually thank the music gods I can't do that since it never interferes with my enjoying music....I'll be really enjoying someone on the show and I'll see Bern grimace. Sounded fine to me, but not to her. Even when the show is this late into the season--only 8 singers left and they all sound wondrous to me--I saw a grimace or two from the two of them.

Mimi does yoga and even scheduled some classes in Southington while she's here. She told me since she's gotten serious about yoga, her joints crack a lot. "I guess that's good," she said. Though I'm not sure how it is. I guess it has to do with limberness. I'm so stiff nothing of mine ever cracks and if it did it would probably be a compound fracture.

Cathy might not come until Wednesday since her dad is in the hospital in Baltimore. Tim comes Wednesday too, on the train, as Cathy will.

Cathy and the girls will leave Saturday morning. Josh is staying for his 20th high school reunion that night and then will leave Sunday Morning. He'll have to go with Bern to the train in her truck.

I'm not sure when Mimi and Tim will be leaving...(and it just occurred to me that these travel plans are of less than no interest to any of you....Sorry.)

It's just that these are people I love so, so much, I think everyone should care.

I hope you have people you love that much and they're with you this week....

Mamaw Jones

For some reason today I've been thinking about my grandmother--the only one I really had since my father's mother died before I could know her. Lina Manona Sadler Jones was her name. Her husband, my maternal grandfather was Eli Jones, no kidding. What a great name, though Lina Manona isn't 'shabby' (as we'd say back home as a compliment).

I remember an enormous amount of things about her--probably more than I remember about my mother, if that's fair. She was such a character.

The thing I remember today is having dinner around her kitchen table with some group of first cousins. As dinner was winding down, invariably, Mamaw Jones would say to one of us--and we all wanted it to be us!--"Have you had enough?" And we would proudly answer, "I've had sufficient."

Then she would say, "You went 'fishin'?"

And which ever one of us it was would say, "I've had plenty."

And she would say, "you caught 20?"

And we would say, since all of us were involved by then, "We're truly full!"

And she would reply, "so where are those fish?"

Then we'd have dessert--raspberry sticky buns or chocolate cake or, best of all, lemon meringue pie.

It always went that way--that call and reply, that Greek chorus, that take-your-breath-away funny exchange with Mamaw Jones. Everytime.

Maybe I'll try it out at Thanksgiving. As you know we're having 14. I bet I could get Morgan and Emma and Tegan into that give and take.

And remember Mamaw on a day when food is King.

To be surrounded

There was no escaping it today--the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. You would have had to have been in a bomb shelter to not know what day it way--away from TV, print, Internet, radio--any way to communicate outside yourself--to not know.

I listened to several people talk about how America lost its collective 'innocence' that day. What bullshit that is.

We had black slaves stolen from Africa for decades. We refused women the vote until the beginning of the last century. We fought a Civil War, two world wars and Korea before JFK was killed. We had a Great Depression.

There was nothing 'innocent' about us--our hands were covered with blood from all that and more.

We were no more 'innocent' in 1963 than we are now--when we cut food stamps and teach to 'tests' rather than 'knowledge' and argue like 12 year old's on the playground about making sure everyone has health insurance and disguise overt racism toward the president as policy disagreement.

Who knows what would have been different had Kennedy lived and had four more years as President? I believe this, the progress against poverty and for civil rights under President Johnson would have been hard to match if JFK hadn't died. And the space program Kennedy promised us came true without him.

We are not 'innocent' and never have been. We might, in the 50's, when I grew up, have been sheltered and naive. But never innocent.

And we are not now. People in the wealthiest country in the history of the world are hungry. People in the country admired for equality are not equal, not at all. Though 'white' Americans will soon be a minority, black and brown and Asian Americans, still, for the most part don't share the 'dream'. Immigrants, which we all were at some point, still struggle to have a taste of the Dream. Women and GLBT folks are still, in spite of all the progress, in harms way in many places in this country.

Don't tell me America 'lost its innocence' 50 years ago today. We have never been 'innocent' and will never be until 'tolerance' becomes 'equality' and wealth is truly shared among all.

I miss him and his brother, after all these years. But let us honor them for who they were, not for who we imagined they would become.

50 years is a real chunk of time. But I remember the day so vividly, so completely.

Ponder, if you are old enough, what this day on a Friday in 1963 was like for you.

That's my gift to you this day--the gift of memory and pondering.....

Be well and stay well, beloved.....

Imagining tomorrow tonight...

There are few events where people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing across decades. Some are personal and some are communal.

 9/11, certainly. I was listening to Imus in the morning, for God's sake, though I loathed his politics I found him amusing. And he started talking about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. I wandered upstairs and started brushing my teeth until I remembered both my children were in New York City and went into the TV room just in time to watch the second plane crash live. My mouth was full of toothpaste and my toothbrush was in my hand as I stared, not knowing what to think, when I heard Bern's truck careen into the driveway with screeching of tires. Then, after a moment, she was beside me, staring at the TV. "Josh and Mimi" is all she said, "where are they?"

And when my father called early on a Wednesday morning in April of 1973 and told me my mother had gone into a coma and I should come, come now. Bern was in New York City acting in an off-off Broadway play and I was in our apartment in Morgantown, about ready to go to work for the West Virginia Department of Welfare as a Child Protection Specialist. Instead I drove unsteadily to Trinity Church after calling Snork Roberts, the Episcopal Chaplain of West Virginia University to tell him I had to talk to him before I drove 5 1/2 hours (yes, Virginia, it takes that long to drive from a county in West Virgina bordering on Pennsylvania to the southern most county in West Virgina bordering on South western Virginia). Snork came and dressed in full Eucharistic Vestments to give me communion and anoint me in the tiny chapel of Trinity Church. It was one of the oddest experiences of my life and, I am convinced, gave me the ability to drive 5 and 1/2 hours to my mother's hospital bed without killing myself and others.

The Bay of Pigs standoff is etched into my brain because Woodrow Wilson (I kid you not!) our bus driver to Gary High School from Anawalt, pulled off the road at a marker for some Indian battle in the middle of, I guarantee you, nowhere, and started reading to us the evacuation bus schedule if the missiles started flying from Cuba and the US and Gwen Brooks started to freak out and ran to the front of the bus and pushed past Mr. Wilson and tried to get out of the bus, which she couldn't, but she could scream and wail endlessly until Woodrow took her in his arms and she passed out from fear. How could that not be etched in my mind?

Then there is tomorrow. On November 22, 1963, I was a junior in high school and at about 2:45, the assistant principal came over the intercom to tell us that the President had been assassinated. It was last period, school ended at 3, and I was in English class with Miss Stacks, the strictest teacher at Gary High School. But she dissolved into tears, astonishing me since I'd assumed she was a Republican, and all the girls in the class fell apart as well. I was feeling misty myself about that dashing young President and his perfect wife but all the girls were needing hugs and support and most of them had never given me a glance, but now I could hold them and say soothing words while feeling bodies I would never have felt otherwise.

The 18 miles from Gary High to Anawalt were ridden for the first and last time in total silence on Woodrow Wilson's school bus. We were too young to opinions that would matter about JFK being killed and too old to not know we were in a moment of history that we would remember forever.

And tomorrow that will be 50 years ago. Half-a-century. And, like the other moments I will never forget and tell you exactly where I was and what I was thinking (my wedding day, my mother's death, my father's death, both my children's birth, my ordination, my retirement Sunday, a few others you'd most likely not understand) the day Jack died is imprinted on my soul, indelible, frozen in amber.

I won't even trouble you with my ponderings of what would have happened if that hadn't happened, though I have some--although I think LBJ got lots done JFK might not have--but tomorrow will be a day when, about 2:45 pm, I'll take a deep breath and ponder my life.

I'd recommend that for anyone. Even if you weren't alive in 1963.

I talked to one of the guys in the package store who's two years older than me about the story I'd just heard on NPR about the Boston Symphony Orchestra which was in an afternoon concert on 11/22/1963 when the news came. They took a break, made the announcement and played the "Funeral March" from Beethoven's 5th Symphony from the sheet music without a rehearsal. Then they took and break and argued about whether or not to preform the second half of the program. Finally the President of the Board of the Symphony came on stage and told the audience that he had gone to a concert the day his father died and found great solace in the music. And assured the audience that the second portion of the concert would provide them solace as well.

The applause after that announcement was deafening....

John in the Package Store was involved in the Weathermen Underground for a while until they were planning to blow up the George Washington Bridge. That passed a limit he told me and he walked out of the meeting and spent a month in the woods of Maine.

Had that plan--to blow up the GW bridge--happened, it would be a moment when I remembered where I was.

John and I grew up in interesting times....