For the past six years, with one miss, I have spent my Thanksgiving at my father's, with him and my stepmother and my two young brothers. Usually there are a few other guests, either friends or other family members, but always less than ten people all told. We share a traditional meal, turkey with all the trimmings, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. But as fabulous as the meal is - make no mistake, I love Thanksgiving dinner - it pales in importance compared to the people sitting around the table. I offer my thanks for the opportunity to spend the time with them, and for their love which I'll always know where to find.
Two years ago, I wasn't able to make it to dad's for Thanksgiving. I had started my first job after college just a short time before, and by the time I got around to trying to buy a plane ticket, it was too late. One of the gentlemen with whom I work was kind enough to invite me to spend the holiday with him and his family, which I very much appreciated, but the feeling just wasn't the same. There really is no place like home for the holidays.
My best Thanksgivings ever, though, must have been the ones when I was really young, maybe around when I was six years old. That was before my parents were divorced, and everyone gathered at the home of one of dad's aunts or uncles on his mother's side. My father is the eldest of six children, and his mother is the third of six, so everyone together made for quite a houseful of people. And in those years, everyone came. As I write, I am thinking of what constituted everyone back then, and it's difficult to believe that that was almost a generation ago. I was the among first of my generation in that family, I suppose: one of my grandmother's parents' first great grandchildren. That's a little bit beside the point, I guess, which is that the feeling of family as community that those gatherings gave me is what has defined for me the meaning of Thanksgiving.
Finding any sense of community is becoming increasingly difficult in the modern world. More and more, the community is limited to the household, the nuclear family. The open front yard has been replaced by the fenced back yard, the front porch has given way to the back deck; in the extreme, open doors have been supplanted by iron bars. The town as a social unit is in decline, or already dead, replaced by largely faceless subdivisions. It seems that the only sense of community left in many towns and cities is political, and even those activities are ignored by most.
An attractive explanation for this phenomenon (if that is an appropriate term) is that people are more likely now than at any time in the past to make their permanent residence far from where they were raised. That is, I assert that a family which has spent several or many generations in the same place or region is more likely to feel a sense of ownership in and belonging to their community. But the question which then presents itself is which is the cause and which the effect? That is, have people in general become less community-oriented because they are more likely to fly far from the nest in pursuit of a career or other things, or are they more likely to take flight because they do not feel a bond to a community? I am not qualified to answer that question in general. For myself, however, I am in California, far from my Indiana home, because this is where I have, in my estimation, the greatest opportunity to have a fulfilling and productive career.
But at this time of year, my thoughts wander even more than usual to my home and family. As the world's electronic infrastructure matures, I can imagine a time when "thought workers" such as myself need not be constrained by the physical location of their employers. It could be possible to live in Indiana and work in California, if I so chose. Perhaps that is unreasonably far-fetched, and perhaps not. But until then, I shall have to be satisfied with the time I am able to spend with my family, and continue to give thanks for it.
That's the way it is.