I truly love the holiday season and recognize how blessed I am to be surrounded by my loving, healthy and proximate family. I often comment to my contemporary friends how fortunate I feel that all four of my adult children and their spouses, as well as all six of my grandchildren live within but a short car ride away from where my wife and I reside. While, on the other hand, the majority of my contemporaries most often need to make separate plans, in order to make separate trips, to visit separate children, often with multiple grandchildren, scattered all across the country!
This past Thanksgiving I actually experienced the privilege of holiday family proximity in an extremely unique way, and the experience affected me greatly.
In order to explain, in early October I left CT for a long planned fantasy golf trip to Ocean City MD. The trip began with a rendezvous of 23 other (mostly) contemporary male acquaintances for a five day golfing experience, which at the age of 75 had the potential to be way too much golf in way too short a span of time. I’m sure that golf trips involving exclusively male participants are a great metaphorical explanation for the evolution of the separate “x” and “y” chromosomes in the human genome. Otherwise, there cannot be an evolutionary requirement or justification for such a male dominant adventure!
Unfortunately for me, I left for the trip only days after testing negative from my second Covid infection, which was very mild… Clearly not feeling perfect, and certainly not at full strength, I am certain my poorly rationalized decision to power through my post Covid recovery on a fantasy golf trip was what ultimately resulted in several weeks of a hacking, debilitating, extraordinarily disruptive “Covid cough”.
Ultimately the post golf experience led to a lengthy, exhausting, lung and sleep-challenged period lasting several weeks during which I could not be within proximate distance to any innocent bystander. It also seemed wise that I stay home on Thanksgiving, even after receiving an invitation to all convene together after three years. Every time I took a breath to speak, I’d go into coughing spasms! It is my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, which my wife and I hosted for years when we had the house in Weston for over 22 years.
Because of how geographically congregated our multi-generational family resides, this invite became a humbling, and emotional pot of gold for me.
So, our youngest daughter and her husband had decided weeks in advance that they were going to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with friends in the Catskills. They do not yet have children of their own and they have a number of very close friends with whom they often spend holiday time.
The decision was made by the oldest daughter, who now has three boys, that the holiday food would be catered (fantastic decision, and because they’re vegetarians), with the exception of the turkey itself and turkey fixings that would be prepared and hosted at the home of our oldest child along with his wife and our two oldest grandchildren. He loves to cook, he’s getting real good at it (unlike me) and would not be denied the privilege. The second oldest sibling and his wife, along with their three year old daughter contributed more GF goodies.
All of the catered food that had been delivered to our home on the morning of the holiday was finally heated, packed up, and delivered by Sue. Although I was alone at home after Sue left late in the afternoon, a couple of “well wishing, wish you were here” calls from the party house transported me to the happy mayhem of the traditional family gathering we had always shared.
And, finally…when Sue arrived back home later that evening, with a container of left-over food and desserts and all of the expressed family well-wishes, I was emotionally overcome by gratitude for our familial proximity, our ability and desire to improvise our gathering, and to support, celebrate, forgive, and experience the true meaning of “Thanks and giving”.
I end this year of blog posts with a heartfelt thank you and wishes for you to experience exactly the kind of life you desire.
Seasons Greetings! Mickey
