Fourth Monday Susan Speaks

Thanksgiving family

By Susan C. Price

It happens almost every year. We are out at a nice place for dinner. We are talking, and drinking, laughing, eating. Sharing bites. It’s considered a crime to order the same thing as someone else; we want to taste it all. Basically, having a blast. The waitress grins bemusedly, leans over and says, “Hey, how do you all know each other?” We laugh, and reply...”We are stepbrothers and sisters.” People don’t believe it. Sometimes we are awed ourselves. That we have stuck together for so long, and get along so well.
    We don’t know the year they met. Madeline, my mother (called Maggi by just about everyone) came out from Detroit with a girlfriend , Millie. I’m not certain if they were just seeking adventure, or sun, or jobs during the Depression of the ’30s. They did find jobs and were living in Redondo Beach. Millie introduced Maggi to her cousin, Lou...who was living in East Los Angeles with his mom, Luba, and his dad, Joe, as they all tried to make ends meet without much income.
    What we do know is that Maggi and Lou fell in love and got engaged. Maggi moved in with him and his family...partially to help support the household...since she was the only one with a steady income.

Then one day, Maggi got a phone call from her ex-husband, Harvey. When Mom got off the phone, Luba, who could not help but overhear, stated, “I think you are not over him.” Mom was offended (at being overheard? or at being second guessed?)...but she thought about it, and decided Luba was right. Mom broke her engagement with Lou and moved back to Detroit and re-married Harvey. This did not last, Harvey wanted an “open” marriage, and did not want kids. They divorced again. (That was not the end of Harvey...but that’s a story for another day.)
    Lou stayed in the Los Angeles area and went on with his life. He fell in love with and married Fran and they had Ken and Joanne. In 1965, at only 42 years old, Fran was struck down by a mean stroke. Lou, Ken, and Joanne went on as best they could, Lou saddened,...but working hard in the dairy sales industry, for which he had trained.

Maggi had moved to New York. She became a Social Worker, and her supervisor was Morris. They fell in love, married, and had Jonathan, and me, Susan. We lived in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and then San Diego. Morris died at 61 of cancer in 1967, just after the end of my freshman year in college.
    And then one day in 1968, Lou’s cousin, Millie, knowing through family that Lou was a widower and somehow having heard on the Detroit grapevine that Maggi was a widow, told Lou to call Mom. He did. A few months later, Mom called me at college in Los Angeles and said, “I am coming to visit you and I am bringing someone special. Sparkle plenty!” she requested. They had fallen in love again, thirty years later. In the spring of 1969, all four kids (Ken, Joanne, Jon, and I) gathered in Las Vegas to witness their marriage in a judge’s chamber. Jon was over 21 and he got to be an “actual” legal witness. I was jealous..

Years go by. We four kids finish colleges and graduate degrees...and a few marriages and have our own homes...mostly not in Los Angeles where Lou and Maggi live.
    One Thanksgiving...we think it was in 1988, Joanne and her husband, Bon, invited us all up to their Northern California home for the holiday. In the photo are Maggi and Lou, Joanne, Bon, Jon, Jon’s son David (sadly, Jon’s first marriage ended in divorce), my partner Mike, Kenny, his second wife Margo, and Kenny’s daughter Lauren by his first marriage.

A few of Bon’s other relatives are there too. Typical modern American “blended” family. I took the photo so I am invisible...but there.
    Unfortunately, that was Lou’s last Thanksgiving. And life goes on...and the Family Thanksgiving became a fixed Sun to the galaxies of our four lives. Thanksgiving is produced by all of us, hostess/host of that year’s kitchen, dining room, living room (it’s that large a group!) doing the turkey and main parts, and everyone bringing something. Sometime in the early 1990s, we added a Friday Night restaurant dinner out, so that the “adults” could get some rest from the noisy, then-toddling, next generation. So Thanksgiving has become two days of talking and eating and walking and golfing and shopping and...eating. And it’s now 26 years and counting. No one of the original four (plus partners now equals eight), has ever failed to show up for this event.

And the family grew. In no particular order: Jon married Janice. She came with two kids, Andrea and Marshall, to add to Jon’s David. Joanne and Bon had the twins, Dylan and Brendan. Ken and Margo had Cameron and Evan, to add to Ken’s Lauren. My registered domestic partner Mike (I just HAD to be different) already had his own kids, Kathleen and Peter. Kathleen got engaged at one of our Thanksgiving celebrations and now she and Raul have produced the first “grandchild,” Tehya.

    As we all live within an hour’s flight of each other, we do also gather in whole or in part for other mostly joyous and fun events. So far the only sad gatherings have related to the deaths of Lou and Maggi, and Margo’s sister. But Thanksgiving is IT, the big one that no one misses. It is so large that it strains some of the houses...but who could we leave out? And we talk all year long. Phone calls, texts, emails…we keep in touch, we tease. (Mostly, they are Giants fans, I bleed Dodger Blue.)
    Jon thinks we get along without the DNA ties because of shared values, socioeconomic levels, politics, and humor. I think it is because it...the Family of Us, has come to mean a great deal to all of us...and we work at it. He suggested I describe the kind of talk we do at the Friday dinner, I can’t...I am just having fun at the dinner and I have no memory of anything specific.
    We’re still interested in each other after all these years and kids, and it isn’t just pro forma, a required event. We like each other...and we are always curious about each other’s lives…and now, the lives of the kids.
    So many folk that we know complain, “Oh, ugh, gotta go see family for Thanksgiving, what a pain!” Sadly, most folks seem to dread their family’sThanksgiving celebration. You know, “Uncle Harry, what a pain in the...!” We listen politely and try not to crow too loudly about loving OUR Thanksgiving. We do tell them that we LIKE each other. After all these years, we are still interested in each other and what we are doing, and what we are thinking, and “Hey, which wine is that? Pour me some.”

I think we hit a milestone this past year. As we always do before we dig into the Thanksgiving feast, we ask each attendee to say what they are thankful for. I usually dread this, as it gets boring and the children...mumble thru it. Then, in one of those WATCH, a beautiful miracle is happening before your eyes! moments, I listened, as the now 20-and-edging- into-30-year-old “kids” said, “I would not miss this.” “I love this Thanksgiving we do.”
   ...well....
    I guess we done good, Mom and Dad. Thanks for getting us started. We miss you...except that I look around the table and I see you everywhere, each Thanksgiving.

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Copyright © 2014 by Susan C. Price

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