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| 11/26/2009 8:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Why Thanksgiving matters: Giving thanks for the future
Thanksgiving, for me, has always been about the parade.
You know the one, the great Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. My mother watched it religiously, and as a child I did, too, in fertile black and white, using my imagination to color in the lines of Popeye and Underdog and Mighty Mouse and all the floats and singers, all the dancers and bands and clowns below the giant balloons.
To each element of the parade, I could attach a fantasy and live it for days in my mind. The floats dragged me along to worlds I could only hope someday to travel to; the bands marched into some exciting time beyond mine; the balloons lifted me high in the sky and tossed me into the currents of eternal flight.
The promise of a voyage. The vision of orbit. That's what it gave me. I gave thanks to the parade, not because it made me feel good about all that I had, but for the possibilities it showed me I could have.
It made me thankful for my future.
As my days have unfolded, Thanksgiving is a parade still, but of a different sort. The Macy's parade still looms large - what new balloons shall they have this year? What old favorites will return? - but other parades now contend for my attention.
There is the parade of all the years and of all the people who have marched with me through them, some floating along as if by magic, they are so blessed with talent and beauty; some staggering beneath the weight of their own instruments, struggling hard to play them well, to finish the route; some tragically blown off course like giant wayward balloons in a blustery, unexpected wind.
Sometimes there is sadness, awful sadness, in a parade, too.
And what of this year's parade? What procession of people would gather around the cavalcade of food from the kitchen? Who would be there to applaud and squeal and say 'oh-my, I'm hungry' as the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, and desserts trooped by, showing off in front of us, dressed in their finest glazed skirts and lightly-whipped tops.
Yes, sitting around the table, loaded with its ritual pageant, it is immediately obvious what there is to give thanks for: Every year I am grateful for all those who fill the chairs and engage my life with the love shown by their presence.
Each person around the table is like a balloon hovering above the great Thanksgiving Day parade. Each conversation, the laughter and the simultaneous chatter, drifts upward into the next, mixing together into a hearty aroma of its own fine distinction. I don't have to talk. I can sit back and breathe in all the flavors of the humanity in the house.
I can do more. I can throw open the windows and let that wonderful spirit loose upon the world. I can watch it waft up the block and stride into the next neighborhood, its own spectacle on review. That done, I can give thanks for their future, though I know not where they are headed.
Again, though, every parade has its sadness. Perhaps I should more accurately call it a bittersweetness. There are the ones who didn't make it: my son and daughter-in-law in Germany; the absent best friend; my sick parents who must spend their Thanksgiving alone; for some families, the soldiers who will never come home.
All are missed. The parade is just a little shorter and a lot poorer for it.
In recent years, my parade has become so much more diverse. The nuclear family is far-flung, so is the extended family, for that matter. So I have inherited another extended family, that is to say, I have developed a sense of family that is extended: not merely my own immediate relatives but this year my physicist friend, so far from the province of her native India; now her friend, whom I do not even yet know, so far from her home in the East; a divorced colleague eager to seek solace in company; an artist pal and his wife; an old friend, too, with whom I look forward to become reacquainted with after 20 years.
I have been filled with excitement about meeting my old friend. It's just like the time they unretired Donald Duck - remember that? - and returned him to the parade after so many years. What would it be like to see her again?
I anticipated it, and gave thanks for our future.
Perhaps this diversity is just a sign of the times. In the past, America has always been a nation of separate and segregated parades. There has been the parade of the rich, always more glamorous and adorned and yet more bittersweet because the affluent are so much more scattered about the Earth. They move about the globe, and so theirs is often a parade of text messages and phone calls and emails.
Then there is the parade of the poor. There is less on the table but more souls around it. May they, on this Thanksgiving weekend, be able to give thanks for their future, but who is to say, in the end, that they who have more hands to hold on Thanksgiving Day are not already richer?
One thing is for sure. As the rich become poorer these days, we all have more diversity and love, if not food, around our tables.
We need it. As a nation we need again, at least on Thanksgiving, to sit together as one extended family, as we did in the beginning, and proclaim unity. For in unity there is strength, and in strength there is freedom, and in freedom there is tolerance, and in tolerance there is love, and in love there is hope for my extended family and for yours.
President Harry S. Truman said it best in his 1945 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, in celebration of victory in World War II:
"We have won (our blessings) with the courage and the blood of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We have won them by the sweat and ingenuity of our workers, farmers, engineers, and industrialists. We have won them with the devotion of our women and children. We have bought them with the treasure of our rich land. But above all we have won them because we cherish freedom beyond riches and even more than life itself. We give thanks with the humility of free men, each knowing it was the might of no one arm but of all together by which we were saved. Liberty knows no race, creed, or class in our country or in the world. In unity we found our first weapon, for without it, both here and abroad, we were doomed."
I believe that we still sit in unity as a nation, and that it is still our first weapon. I believe the United States of America survives yet as one all-encompassing extended family, and that that remains the sign of the times and thus gives hope to my family and to yours.
May we give thanks for our national soul, and for its future. By no one arm but by all shall we be saved.
As for me, as always, I sit in the fading sun of a Thanksgiving Day I never want to end. I look into the faces of my extended family and wonder where our journeys will take us, both together and apart. I can't help but wonder what will become of us.
It does not matter. Soon my extended family, both those here and those missing, will jump from the porch and into the night sky, a parade on their way into next year. Popeye, Underdog, Mighty Mouse: I stare at them all until the procession fades away into some exciting time beyond mine, into the currents of their eternal flight.
As always, though, they leave with me the promise of voyage and the vision of orbits. They inspire me and give me hope and reassurance. They make me thankful, as I turn out the lights, for the future - your future, my future, the nation's future - on this Thanksgiving weekend 2009.
Richard Moore can be reached at rmmoore1@verizon.net.
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