Pearl River For decades, with good cause, people up and down the line have blasted Christmas as a commercial fandango. Black Friday sales have bled into Thanksgiving in much the same way, but despite Amazon and the NFL, Thanksgiving still stubbornly remains a family-centered day, damn them all.
I thought about this as mi companera once again assembled family and friends to feast and fellowship. Some years, there have hardly been more than a half-dozen of us, as the venue has bounced between New Orleans, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This year was going to be at a camp near the Pearl River boundary of Louisiana and Mississippi, less than an hour from New Orleans. At one point, it looked like the numbers might pass 25, but the final count after one thing and other, was 21. A nephew, his wife, and seven children, ranging from pre-K to fully grown, were coming over from the Houston area. One brother-in-law and his wife were coming from Arkansas, and a sister-in-law and her husband were arriving from Missouri via Texas. A nephew and his partner would be with us before his shift in the French Quarter began in the afternoon. Our two very grown children from New Orleans would be there. A dear friend and colleague and her husband would make the short hop from Slidell.
The venue was a fishing camp on the bayou, so having enough tables and chairs was a project. It would have to be outside on the deck. No rain was expected, but the temperature was dropping, so we might be lucky to make it over 60 F. We had two hams from Arkansas, jambalaya, crawfish pie, three pies baked by the Amish, and a mess of the regular items including turkey, dressing, two kinds of cranberry sauce, along with the ever-popular sweet potatoes with marshmallows that disappear within minutes.
The sun was shining on a cloudless day. Two of the older kids took a canoe out. The front yard was full of balls being kicked, batted, and shot through the giant hoop. There was kidding about the nephew working on a project to send people to Mars, who was deemed essential, and his dad, working as a subcontract for the Army keeping America safe, who was furloughed during the shutdown. People walked to the dock to see the fish jump and just look over the scene. It wasn’t Norman Rockwell, but it was warm, friendly, and family to the gills.
This is a modern, contemporary American family with all that means in reality, as opposed to the White House version. That means it was multi-racial, same-sex and whatever, MAGA and way left, holy-roller and none of the above, but for one day it all fit together seamlessly in the deep commitment to family first and the devil take the hindmost, glued tightly with love.
A dear friend and comrade, who dated back to welfare rights with me and sat on the board of a foundation with me for years, now dead for decades, once saw a picture of one of our Thanksgiving gatherings taken from the porch steps of our house in New Orleans. The picture of the crew on Facebook that year dated to when my parents and brother were still alive. She pulled me aside and told me that one picture gave her a whole different perspective on me and our friendship.
Like it or not, this is our family, and this is what America looks like now where values run deeper than politics.