I went home

For Thanksgiving, I went home to see my mom and dad, Artha Jean and the Master Sergeant, Larry. I didn’t tell them I was coming. I crunched my way up their pea gravel driveway and stepped onto the lawn I mowed and cursed as soon as I could walk. Anytime I whined the old man would talk about Amish kids pulling plows behind oxen at sunup. “Where’s your pride?”

“Asleep. In my bed.”

I stepped over mom’s African Daisies and the porch was as I remembered it. I opened the rusted screen door and knocked on the front door. And let it close. I waited.  The door cracked. An eye blinked and a woman spoke. “Larry. It’s the door. Guess who’s here!” They couldn’t believe their eyes. They didn’t recognize me at first. I recognized them. Clear as day. Mom, plump as a blueberry and Dad, skinny as a Marlboro cigarette. Both smoking, laughing and coughing.

I studied them through their screen door and in the shadow they were as I remembered them. “You got Glenn Miller on the radio!”

“Is that really my boy?”

I saw what I never saw in my youth. The rough lives they had lived drawn into their old faces. My mother put her chubby hand on the handle of their screen door. I looked at her and said “Mom. It’s your boy, David.”

She clapped her hands together over her heart, threw open the door and said, “Let me look at you!”

“Hard to believe Larry and I’ve been dead since 1979. And here you are an old man of 69 years. How whacka doodle nutty is that?”

A little background. I need these annual visits. They died when I was in my twenties. Never met their grandkids or saw what became of them or me or met my sweetheart, Ellen. The last they knew, I was a young art school grad scraping by painting murals, uncertain of what to do in life.

“Good God, Mom I see in your eternity you are allowed to smoke cigarettes. Still smoking those Virginia slims?”

The Master Sergeant interrupted us. “Come here give me a hug”

He squeezed me hard crushing the pack of Marlboros in his shirt pocket for all eternity against our hearts. “At ease.” Patted my shoulder as if he was proud of me.

When I stepped inside, I said, wow, this place looks just like it did when I was 24. You know this mid-century modern stuff is worth a fortune now?

I didn’t waste my time complaining about how smoky the house was. “Mom, the turkey smells delicious. Who’s coming? Don? Bob? Shirley?”

“Both of your brothers and your sister and their families will be here and where is your family mister? “

I didn’t have a clue where they were. “My dream weaver hadn’t integrated them into my daydream, mom. “

She ordered me to make up something good.

“Oh, they are very sorry, they couldn’t make it this year. But I have pictures. I’m so sorry you left the world before they were born.”

“This is a day to be thankful, David.”

“You have three beautiful adult grandchildren. And three beautiful great grandchildren. Two generations you would have loved spoiling rotten.”

We spent an eternity pouring over pictures and asking about relatives near and far.

The forever 65-year-old Master Sergeant patted my 69-year-old head and rubbed it and laughed and then coughed and hacked and coughed and then lit up a new one. “You’re losing your hair. You’re really starting to look like me. Funny as Hell.”

“I love you too, Dad. Mom, the turkey smells delicious.”

“Hell of a cook your mother.”

Together we watched “A Christmas Carol” on the Magnavox. That night we all crowded into their living room to watch “The Wizard of Oz”. My brothers and I sung along to “If I only had a brain” and the women agreed.

The Master Sergeant set the table while mom warmed the stuffing and the mashed potatoes, and I had the honor of carving the small turkey. In my dreams I am a samurai master carver. Silent. Executed with blinding speed. Perfect thin wafers of white meat just slide off my blade onto the plate. As I carve methodically, I am in the moment. The place. The time. The people. Behind me I smelled handsome Bob’s cologne. And his wife’s perfume. Her saucy laugh gave me chills when I was a little boy. Don’s tobacco breath. Mom and Dad’s lit smokes.

Whenever I returned here it is always 1979 in their kitchen defined by aged turquoise appliances, aqua-colored walls, including a pale avocado colored blender sitting where it always sat. On that beaten Formica countertop covered with 1 million postmodern space age gold speckled triangles dotted with burn marks from cigarettes left on the countertop while Betty “Virginia Slims” Crocker was cooking. Next to me was the scratched and chipped sink in which she bathed us as babies.

How they got by on his one income and their 2 pack a day habit I will never know.

On the narrow sill of the open window over the sink teetered Mom’s beloved blue Admiral plastic clock radio set to KAIR, “Drive with KAIR—everywhere”, played a soulless instrumental version of White Christmas while Mom’s canaries sang their own melody. The doorbell rang all morning long and a procession of loved ones came into my thoughts and arms as light as vapor and when it came time to give thanks, I was speechless. We ate and laughed and hugged and reminisced and cried for hours and hours and in an instant, it was time to go home to the present hour. Good God I’m late. Look at the time. I’m supposed to help with the shopping and packing for our Thanksgiving reunion coming up at a cabin in the mountains.

I lifted my head up off their headstone. I looked at my old self stretched out there on the lawn of the cemetery between all the other graves, stood up, swept the dry winter grass off my pants, turned and looked down at their worn faded marker. “Happy Thanksgiving, you two. See you next year.”

I am thankful for you my dear readers. I think of us as belonging to a very large family of brothers and sisters with similar values, hopes, and dreams for Arizona and our nation and world. My Progressive Newsletter effort is roughly two years old and I am blown away by my success.

With this pulpit I will cheer us on. We will weather the nightmare years with humor, moral courage and smart resistance. We will not go back.

When we fight we in. When we lose we keep fighting until we win.

Speaking of resistance my wife and I were at Trader Joe’s shopping for odds and ends for the twelve people at the cabin. I couldn’t resist the Danish Kringle when I walked past the display.

I carried a Kringle to the cart proud of my find. Ellen, the dream killer, said, “There will already be three pies.”

“Hm.”

She added in her wisest Martha Stewart manner, “You know there’s plenty of time between now and when we leave for the cabin, so why don’t we come back and get one that’s fresh in a few days.”

Looking down at my innocent client in the cart I scoffed “It’s wrapped in plastic.”

She said, “O-ka-a-a-y.” And we checked out.

She had surrendered in a sing song, “you’ll be sorry” fashion that I had to answer. I finally responded in the car. On the way home with her I had a vision of us at the Thanksgiving feast at the cabin three days from now and my Kringle is a hit. I turned to her and said, “Hey everybody. Look! I brought Kringle and guess who doesn’t get a piece? It’s that mean old Ellen. Yum..mm.. yum. Sure is moist and soft. And fresh! None for you, dream killer.” She laughed and we laughed, and I love her laugh and we laughed together and that’s what I am most thankful for. Her wonderful laugh.

In our cabin on this Thanksgiving Day, I will sit at a feast table with my wonderful wife and our three amazing adult children,and my wonderful son-in-law and my three beautiful grandchildren and my two gracious ex-wives who are the moms of the adult kids and my eldest son’s wonderful new partner.

And will reflect on my favorite movie ending.

Have a happy and blessed holiday,

Your favorite heathen,

David

P.S. I hope the Kringle tastes fresh this afternoon, or I’ll never hear the end of it