My mother, Grace, and her sister Elsie were lifelong best friends, two adjacent younger girls in a family of 13, and our two families had Thanksgiving together every year, usually at Elsie’s house because she was the better cook, a perfectionist, whereas Mother had six kids, four of us boys, which didn’t encourage perfection. Mostly, she served chow.
We were quiet devout people, the women exemplified mannerliness and motherhood, the men were taciturn and could quote Scripture, nobody smoked or drank or swore, the baby napped on a bed among the coats, and the afternoon proceeded along two tracks, heading for a collision: the dinner on one track, Packers-Lions game on the other.
Uncle Don was a Packer fan, from Wausau, and had played guard in the days of the single-wing offense. He was a big man with a big bark and he got intensely involved emotionally with the game. My dad never played football and thought that fanhood was childish, perhaps even unchristian. Don’s two boys and my three brothers and I sat on the couch or on the floor, Dad sat in an armchair, and Don got up close to the screen where he could yell at it. My Dad looked at a book, any book, to avoid seeing a grown man yelling at an appliance, “That was holding! You didn’t see that? Open your eyes, ref! He had both arms around him. He was tackling him and the guy didn’t even have the ball!” And we boys watched this seminar on the meaning of masculinity, as the women coaxed the dinner toward the goal line.
Lavish aromas, six well-behaved boys, my absentee father, and Uncle Don living and dying with the Packers, sometimes moving laterally with the play. He simply could not contain himself. All my other uncles — I had a dozen of them — were soft-spoken men who avoided showing strong emotion, and here was Don — in his heart, he was on the bench, suited up, ready to go in and bash heads.
But when dinner was ready, it was brought to the long table and we were summoned. Don turned the sound down and took his place at the head of the table and said a prayer thanking God for His goodness and mercy and for sending us a Savior, but even when praying he was listening to the announcer in the next room. It was a gorgeous feast: sage stuffing in the great bird’s carcass, baked yams, baked rolls, cranberries, and Don dashing into the living room to yell, “Ya gotta be kidding! How can you pass on third and two??”
Christmas is complicated, sometimes treacherous, involving gift-giving and therefore guilt and matters of taste, but Thanksgiving is a peasant holiday, and good taste plays no part in it, you simply come to the table. Elsie’s feast was, of course, the dinner of all dinners, generous, comfortable, the giblet gravy, the cranberry mould, and Elsie hovering overhead, coaxing, replenishing the platters, apologizing for the food though it was perfect, the mashed potatoes that somehow fell short of their potential, the stuffing what was overcooked (but it was not). My poor father sat in silence, unable to converse with women or children, he loathed football, he wanted to talk about exodus, mainly his own.
The sun set, the table was cleared. A period of lethargy followed, a few rounds of Rook or Flinch, and then we attacked the pies. The holiday dwindled, the baby cried. The leftovers were wrapped and apportioned, the little kids were bundled up, the long goodbyes were said, in the kitchen, and in the driveway, and through the open car windows.
There was much more to Don than football. That’s why you should stick close to family, so you can come to appreciate them. He was a serious student of the Bible. He became a good preacher. When Elsie lay dying, he kept her home and took care of her right up to the end. He told me: “Of course I took care of her. I didn’t hire someone to come in and do it. I loved her.”
In church this past Sunday, we sang “Now thank we all our God,” and I walked home, a freezing wind whipping through the city canyons, thinking of loved ones far away. Life is good, thank You for this. The country has elevated a cruel and corrupt man to power and now we shall see what good our Constitution is and what sort of senators and judges we have. God bless us. More we do not need.
