Another Thanksgiving

So how was it? Did it disappoint you? Surprise you? Live up to your expectations? Did you tell yourself you had no expectations as a way of getting ready for whatever came up? And how did that go? Was it what you had in mind all along?
Funny about these holiday gatherings. There are those of us who are fortunate enough to have family with us that we enjoy being with (count me among them!) and then there are those whose families are broken, dysfunctional, or just plain absent. Sometimes Thanksgiving leaves us with a bigger hole in the heart than before.
When I was a child, we had many family gatherings, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas. My favorite memories were of all of us gathered around the piano singing with gusto while Mother's tumbling notes tried to keep up and often failed. It didn't matter. We were family and we were where we belonged.
Sometimes Dad accompanied her on his trombone, using his old felt hat for a mute. I loved hearing him play "Sugar Blues" and imagined myself - then a child of 8, 9, 10, 11 - sitting in a smoky nightclub listening to jazz greats like Louis Armstrong.
The mystique of music was our holiday mainstay. On Christmas Eve we gathered again around the piano to sing familiar carols from the old Cokesbury Hymnal. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "O Come All Ye Faithful," one of my favorites because Dad and Granddad always sang the bass notes. Then came "O Holy Night," another favorite, with Aunt Iva Jeanne's beautiful soprano sending the rest of us to hushed tones of accompaniment. We all came back to belt out "Joy to the World" and ended with a peaceful "Silent Night."
Altogether we probably spent less than half an hour around the piano, but it was always the highlight of the evening. Afterward, the adults would drift back to their eggnog and conversations, we children having nothing to look forward to now but the impossible task of getting to sleep so that morning would come and we could open the gifts we had poked, pinched and shaken. We were too old to believe in Santa anymore, so our gifts now were all wrapped, but the excitement was still there. And though I don't recall a single gift I received in those late elementary school years, I recall going to bed with my stomach in a knot of anticipation.
But back to Thanksgiving - although we didn't have gifts, it was a time of great thanks, feelings of glowing well-being. That same knot of anticipation was there before dinner, knowing the feast that awaited us would be delicious, sweet, sugary.
This year, I felt the old magic again. My sister and her husband drove in from Memphis and we spent the day before Thanksgiving buying fresh vegetables, assembling ingredients and making two fresh Karo pecan pies - the pecans coming from my nephew's back yard - and doing what we used to do. Except, of course, that we had no piano to gather around, no mother to play for us, no gravelly bass voices to fill the air. Someday we may play the old cassette tapes we made, and see if we can make out the individual voices.
For now, it was enough to be surrounded by family and by people of good will - 22 of us in all - as we circled the table, said a prayer, filled our plates. Enough? More than enough -- overflowing.

One Step on the Journey

This blog is devoted to thoughts on poverty. As I sit savoring the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, I'm thinking about what it means for the poverty that's present in our land. What will it mean for the young African American male who's struggling to stay clear of drugs and create a good life for himself, fully participating in our economy? What will it mean for the young white woman who's employed but barely making it in supporting herself and her children?
For their part, I hope they will feel a new sense of pride, a new will to accomplish their dreams.
Are we -- you and I -- ready to do our part?
Our part is harder. We have to find ways to support their efforts that are beyond handouts, that are truly empowering, that will change the very structure of this top-down culture so that real opportunities not only exist - but abound.
We're talking change here, change that has been a long time coming.
Generations of poverty thinking need to change.
Generations of we can't -we're afraid to - we're not ready- it won't work -- all those negative messages we feed ourselves constantly -- that's poverty thinking. That's the real poverty that throws up a Berlin wall of impossibility. And we all know that when that wall started coming down, it came down. And got replaced with something greater.
I hope we can tear down that mythical but solid wall and get to work building abundance.