This is a story of Thanksgivings past. The story of life with my parents has sharp dividing lines. The first part is a story of feeling safe, being sheltered from suffering, and living a life based in love. I grew up in upper middle class homes with 2 parents and 3 siblings. There was many a dinner party where my parents entertained friends. These were true friends, not just formal gatherings. My father played dixieland jazz, my sister and I would dance, my mother would serve food and martinis, and my father would sit around enjoying himself, sharing with friends and being with his family. The dividing line is his early death at the age of 50, after which our mother went into a tailspin for a while, was dropped from the elite social circle that was connected to my father’s position at the university, and alcohol became her main companion. She later reformed, recovered, and never went back to her old companion, which was helpful in our having any relationship at all. These periods in my life are: before age 16, age 16 to 32, and then life after age 32 until her passing 22 years later. The following is a segment from before age 16, recalling “Thanksgiving and Christmases past”.
Thanksgiving and Christmases past
My parents each trained me well and gave me certain lessons in life. Our holidays were filled with delicious home cooked meals, and much spirit. We always made a big deal about decorating the Christmas tree. It was an event we looked forward to. My mother always read us “The night before Christmas” on — the night before Christmas. 🙂 My mother took us to church regularly, usually United Methodist or Presbyterian, depending on where we lived. She grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church. My father was a strong Baptist in his young adulthood and even sang in the church with his parents and some other relatives. But as he aged, he became more and more disenchanted with organized religion. He would go about twice a year, to please my mom. My father taught me a love for education, dedication to his students, a love for life, a commitment to contributing to the advancement of life on earth.
Our Christmas holidays were unfortunately, centered around gifts, and we received many. But they were happy times.
I used to go to church when none of the rest of my family would go with me. I would also go to a chapel which was to be open for prayers at any time. I always love sitting in a church and looking up at the stained glass windows. In high school, I was president of my church youth group for about 2 years. We organized a “coffee house” for youth, held every Friday night, where we had snacks and dancing. We also met every Wed. night. At a slightly younger age I attended a Presbyterian youth group called “Chi-Ro” where we gathered every Saturday to make crafts together. So my youth is filled with memories of the church as a place to go, where we liked to go. I also have wonderful memories of Christmas caroling, the old fashioned way, where we actually walked around singing carols at people’s houses. We never knew if they would come to the door and acknowledge us, but the joy was in the singing. It was always cold. We usually gathered together at the end for hot chocolate.
My father died when I had just turned 16, in August. That December, I organized a Christmas caroling group all by myself, and we went around the neighborhood. I remember there was a dog that followed us and would start howling every time we started singing! It was as if he wanted to be a part of the singing. When we got done that year, I returned home to find some of my relatives from Indiana had driven out to Pennsylvania to spend the holidays with us, as a surprise, since it was the first Christmas without my father.
The next few years were more difficult, but I wanted to write my pleasant memories of the holidays. At the end of her life, my mother found her faith once again, and always had a Bible and certain little booklets from a women’s Bible group she would keep in her living room and read from. She returned to her roots, the Dutch Reformed Church, now the Christian Reformed church, and found much solace there. Her faith was childlike and somewhat based in fear: Her best friend, who died before her, told her, “We won’t know each other Marti, We’ll be angels!” She had no concept of life as an angel except perhaps floating around on clouds and singing praises of God. It was a somewhat childlike faith. But she believed.
One of the strongest auditory memories of any Thanksgiving dinner was my grandfather’s voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer. He always said it the same: He bowed his head and devoutly recited it at a speed so fast you could hardly follow the words. It was a lower voice, a respectful, more formal pronunciation of words, but one he memorized and recited at a zooming speed, without stopping to think. This was a man who had to quit school at the 6th grade, in order to work to help support his family. At some point in his life, he memorized this entire prayer.
Doctor Grandma 
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