Thanksgiving 2007

We normally host a good sized dinner party for friends and family at Thanksgiving. We make it a big celebration with the food, table and wine. But this year we found ourselves alone in Memphis with only the dogs to keep us company. It was an eerie feeling, unaccustomed as we are to holiday solitude. So, we decided to create our own day and fill it with all that makes us happy.

The day began at 8AM with a long walk with the dogs. We treated them to a special city walk complete with new smells, sounds and views. But every neighborhood store was buttoned tight, even John's beloved coffee shop, so we circled our way back to the river, walking against a wind with a tinge of Chicago bluster as it stormed across the river from Arkansas.

Once home, we turned on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, toasted the day with home brewed coffee and prepared eggs and toast. As we ate, we reviewed the menu and eagerly looked forward to undertaking dinner preparations.

Our turkey was a little sucker, only 10.8 pounds. We stuffed her with spicy sausage dressing. A seasoning crisis was averted John combined fresh rosemary, dried sage, garlic, salt and pepper to coat the bird and combine with the white wine and butter basting sauce. Later, I made a rich gravy from the roasting drippings.

Thanksgiving should fill the house with succulent smells. For the sweet, we baked a pumpkin pie. Betty Crocker supplied the ready made pie crust and Libby's the pumpkin pie filling. I stirred in the eggs and milk. The smell was right, as if I'd make it from scratch. We topped it off with the whipped cream I made from scratch. Perfecto!

As we watched football with a blaze in the fireplace, Presecco in our glasses, the Andrews traditional shrimp cocktail to nibble, and the dogs at our feet, the house was filled with the aroma of roasting turkey and cooling pie.

John and I were thankful for having this Thanksgiving. For 15 years we've been madly in love and best friends. Our health is holding even though my shoulder may see surgery next year. We're financially sound and have a goodly number of friends across the country. Our children are talking to us.

As we ate, Bob, the husband of Dottie, one of my close highschool Chicago girlfriends, collapsed and never regained consciousness after his Thanksgiving dinner. He was 61, six months older than me. Be thankful. All else doesn't matter, does it?

Returning home

The 8:30 AM plane from Memphis to Baltimore was the way I like it -- uneventful. I thought I was going home. Afterall, we've only living in Memphis two months. After snatching my bag from carousel, I taxied to the University for the 1PM dissertation defense of my last doctoral student. It's been a long effort and I wanted to be there for the final step. She was successful. Like a proud Mom, I beamed and gave her a warm embrace when we told her she had passed. With that over, I was now ready to be with friends, having come home for a weekend of theatre and doings with my friends.

The weekend was totally fun. We spent it with our close friend who we hadn't seen since she accompanied me and Fred in the drive from Baltimore to Memphis. The weather was perfectly spring -- azure skies, pleasant breezes and glorious sunshine. We went to the National Portrait Gallery in DC before dinner and theatre to take in the amazing photographs Harry Benson (http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/benson/index.html). On Sunday, after a truly lazy morning at the hotel, we visited the first cathedral in America, the Baltimore Basilica (http://www.baltimorebasilica.org/) before going to the Lyric to see an emotional Tosca (http://www.baltimoreopera.com/06-07/tosca.asp). We were definitely tourists doing what we do on any vacation -- exploring a city, seeing the sites and enjoying the entertainment.

After living in Baltimore and having a large network of friends and experiences, I expected stronger emotions to bubble up from my gut, but, they didn't. It was like having an out of body experience -- I was there, but I wasn't. I belonged, but didn't belong. Baltimore was no longer home. I felt like a visitor to this city, not one of its people.

What is it about a place that makes you call it "home," that place with the siren call to return? Did I like Baltimore? Yes. Do I have good friends there? Yes, the best. Yet, Baltimore is not home. After moving every four or five years for the past 25 years, do I actually have a place I call home? Is there a place to return to, an emotional anchor, filled with memories, that draws me back? Is there a place where I can just be; where words aren't always needed, where stories can be retold with all the richness of their first telling, and people start groaning with each new flourish I add? Where is my anchor? What is my anchor? When do I feel I'm coming home?

My parents home is the home of the past. For years, home was in Illinois where Mom and Dad lived, first in Naperville, then in Woodstock. Like most families, us girls and our fammilies converged at their house to share holidays and celebrations, whether we wanted to or not. That's what families do. Dad died, then some years later Mom moved to Arizona. Mom and home were not the same. Person and place did not equate.

So, where is home and that special combination of people and place? Where is my emotional anchor today? Is it Memphis? There is no attic or basement filled with memorabilia to invoke sentimental memories. John and I are left to create a home that stands apart from place. It must be wherever we are or who we are with -- there is never a place to "return to".

Sometimes I feel I'm returning home when I visit a sister. I can argue, laugh, act silly and even get uppity, knowing, in the end, they will yell back at me, then love me anyway. They tolerate me because Mom and Dad treated us all the same. Translation: Everybody got what I wanted because I was the oldest. That meant everyone got ice skates for Christmas one year. My sisters bring me home.

I also have a home that's not connected to family. I return home every New Year's eve to Severna Park when I gather with the friends I grew up with. Holly, her sister Jerriann, Diana and I cook together and share stories from years ago as if it were yesterday. We see ourselves as we were as adolescents and 20 somethings, not as we are in our 50's and 60's. Even the food we eat has meaning, evoking past homecomings. Lobster for dinner, fritatas of some sort for New Year's day breakfast, and hoppin' john with soup and salad are musts for the menu. We bundle up and go walking in the same neighborhood commenting on the same holiday decorations. We sit around card tables to play Scrabble, which Holly is bound to win, and construct 1000 piece puzzles late into the night, while our men snooze on couches after meals.

I guess, in the end, Home is a place where the people make you feel so comfortable that you can walk around in your pajamas, leave the paper on the floor, burp loudly, or sit all day in a big comfy chair and do nothing at all. No one takes notice. But then again, some people would look at that picture and think they're in an asylum.