THANKSGIVING IS FOR GIGGLES AND GRINS . . . IF YOU'RE NOT THE COOK

It's that time of year to feast on turkey and all the trimmings, a traditional thing to do, but without enough thanks to the cooks.  It's hard work for somebody but giggles and grins for everyone else.  In recent years, we've taken a stand on that sort of thing and have dispensed with the cooking.  There'll be no big feast here this year, like last year when we went to a Chinese restaurant.  The turkey gets a break around here now, and we may never do it again.  The cook gets a break too, and she's thankful for that.  But I have memories of Thanksgivings past that are worthwhile.  I think most families have a way of personalizing Thanksgiving, like in my growing up years there was also shrimp gumbo prepared by my Cajun uncle.  To me, that was the best part of the meal.

I love Thanksgiving food - the turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and fancy vegetable dishes.  I love the desserts and the day with family and friends, but we all get old sooner or later.  Family members drift away and have their own families to tend to, and that's the way it should be.  As my wife and I aged, so did Thanksgiving as it moved to other houses where the kids had settled.  One year I drove through a snowstorm to get to the feast, and said on the way home, "Never again."  I broke that vow a time or two, but even though all I have to do now is drive across town for the feast, I'll bow out and leave it to the kids.  We might stop by later on, but the giggles and grins have gone out of celebrating the feast now.  I think that comes from understanding that one day a year to give thanks for the lives we have isn't enough.  Why not do it everyday?  And does it have to be a feast to remind  us of what we should be thankful for?

Giving up a special holiday might not seem like much of a sacrifice, but this was always my favorite holiday.  I'm not a Christmas person.  The commercialization of that holiday ruined it for me some time ago.  We haven't had a tree or decorations around here in a lot of years now, and the giving of gifts turned to just some money to special people to buy what they really wanted.  We forgot what Christmas is supposed to be about.  I've also considered the possibility we've really forgotten what Thanksgiving should be about, which makes it less essential, just too much fuss and bother.  I'll be thankful today, that's for sure.  I'll push aside all the things that bother me and think of the good things, and not just for today.  Maybe Thanksgiving should be about the promise of a better tomorrow, something that's not easy to feel good about sometimes.  Here's what I'm thankful for:  I still have some life left, for however long it lasts, and I still have choices as to how I'll live it.  That should be enough.

EMPATHY: THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING

I've seen where actors sometimes have problems shedding the skin of characters they've played on screen.  They get too involved with a character, then have trouble shedding that skin when it's time to go back to real life.  As a writer, I understand that.  Sometimes you get more than involved because the character skin you wear fits tight and is hard to shed.  Perhaps you use a pseudoymn, a pen name, and you assume that character while you write.  It's more than just a change of names; it's a change of personality to a certain degree.  And then there's the character in the book, or perhaps several characters, you have a hard time with.  Maybe you don't like the character, the bad guy, but he's important to the plot, and you've got to stick with him.  And you need to understand him.  I've known about this empathy problem for a long time because I've gone through months of depression after finishing a book, or I've been angry for a while.  The reverse of that can be true: you could come out of it feeling good, even enlightened and euphoric for a while.

As of late I've been working on a book about my father.  He died over 30 years ago, but he left behind a lot of unpublished poems, stories, little bons mots that I thought were worth a life of their own in print.  I gathered together some information and started digging through it.  At the outset I planned on doing a book of collected poems and short prose without much in the way of annotation, but that wasn't possible.  For the book to be interesting, engaging, and worth the effort, it would require some history of the man . . . and some of my observations about him.  That mean doing some research because I didn't know a lot about his background.

He was born and raised in the eastern Oregon town of Burns.  I'd been there once as a seven year old, and didn't remember much.  I didn't know either of my paternal grandparents because they were either dead or near death when I was born.  I knew a few of my uncles and aunts because they had visited with us, and I knew only one of my first cousins.  Worst of all, I didn't really know my own father.  I grew up in a house with him, knew a lot about his personal life, but I didn't really know him until I read his stories and poems.  In doing that, I got to know the man quite a bit better, and there's a problem with that.  I buried him in 1983 but mostly in a haze of confusion and grief . . . and then I went on with life and worked hard at not thinking about it.  And now, I'm faced with having to bury him again, and this time wide-eyed and knowing what was lost.

The upside of all this is an awakening of who I am and where I came from.  I'm on the one hand sad and depressed, but my head is full of images of my father as a youngter, young adult, and until I got to know him as a father.  I'm piecing together his story, and through his own words, I got inside his head a little.  I never read his poetry before, and I should have.  We all say in print things we sometimes can't say in person.  I should've read it before, but better late than never.  I'll get back to being me before long, but at the present I'm still dealing with images - those pictures of the mind that can damn sure hold your attention for a while.  And even though it's a bit troubling, I don't mind at all.