Easter and Christmas dinners were always at my grandparents’ farmhouse. Those events comprise many of the fondest memories of my youth, even if Amy, Alan, and I, the three youngest of our generation, were forever consigned to the kids’ table come mealtime. The location and attendees for Thanksgiving gatherings, though, were much more variable. I’m guessing this was a function of obligations various relatives occasionally had to spend the day with the ‘other’ side of their families (the daughters of my mother’s older sister are eight to sixteen years older than I, and by that time were married and beginning to have children).
For a while, trips to my great-aunt’s house in Warsaw were part of our Turkey Day rotation. She was my father’s only family after his mother died in early 75. Eventually, though, playing host to a meal like that became too much of a burden; in later years she traveled with us, going wherever we did. A few times we took Aunt Birdie and my mother’s parents north to the outskirts of Dayton, OH, to spend the day with Mom’s younger sister and her family—after stuffing ourselves while catching up, we’d watch the end of the Lions game and the start of the Cowboys game before packing up to head home.
And once—my perhaps-faulty memory is telling me it was 79, when I was 15 and a high-school sophomore—we gathered at the home of my cousin Becky. If I’m right about the year, there would have been a five-month-old in the house, the third member of the next generation on Mom’s side of the family. (That infant is now, of course, 40 years old and a father of four; he works in Cincinnati for a well-known non-profit.)
I believe the next time I was at Becky’s house on Thanksgiving was in 2013. The various branches of Mom’s family spent fewer holidays together following the passing of my grandmother in 2001, so it had been awhile since I’d been with my cousins on Thanksgiving. But that year my father was under hospice care, a little over a week away from dying. Becky lived a very few miles away from the hospice facility, and she kindly invited Mom and my family to join their gathering, six years ago today. It was a moment of grace and welcoming fellowship in an otherwise somber and not-very-fun time. I remain quite grateful for that.
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Regardless of where I was for Thanksgiving of 79, I can say with certainty that Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home” has always been linked with the day—I had to have heard it that morning. The third single from Breakfast in America was very much a favorite in the moment (I’ve steadfastly liked it somewhat less than “The Logical Song” but a fair amount more than “Goodbye Stranger” across the decades). The sound of piano and mournful harmonica on both intro and ending still evokes the chill of a cloudy, late fall day.
That association was so strong that I thought about “Take the Long Way Home” through much of Thanksgiving Day in 80. I hoped, maybe even expected, to hear it, that it would become one more annual tradition. For at least one year, it was—the song came on over the portable radio I kept in my bedroom just before I called it a night.
Wishing all of you a joyous Thanksgiving; may your ways home be as short as you want them to be.
The Music of My Life 