Month: November 2018

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The Holidays

Sometimes I think I am living on a foreign planet.  All of the familiar traditions that I grew up with have vanished and I  don’t know how to participate in or adapt to the ones that have replaced them.  “Friendsgiving”, for instance.  I barely know what it is, let alone the requirements for how it should be celebrated.

I do know that it is a substitution for the tradition of families celebrating Thanksgiving, which no longer seems attractive or viable due to our living so far apart and isolated from our families.  In spite of leaving behind most of our family traditions, the younger generations still long for connections.

We used to have that in family.  The nice thing about family gatherings is that we know each other.  All of our foibles are familiar.  The red-neck brother and leftist cousin who will always argue about politics, and then hug and sit down next to each other at the table.  The other cousin who does not know what being on time entails, who will show up with a cold dish just as we have finished cutting the turkey.  The aunt who strives for perfection.  The clumsy one who is always spilling gravy on the white tablecloth.  The one who bakes the most amazing pies.  All of these have a place at the table and it would not be the same, it would not be family if even one failed to show up.

Try to replicate that with a bunch of friends or strangers.  When I was young and just out of college, I ignored family Thanksgivings for a few years.  A few friends and I tried to cook a turkey that never tasted like the one that grandma or my mother made.  We may have thought that we were sophisticated, citizens of the world, but nothing came together in the same way that it did in my grandmother’s kitchen.  It wasn’t too long before I began sheepishly appearing at family holiday celebrations.  They weren’t the same without family.

I remember all of the holidays that we celebrated while we lived in New Jersey and Memphis.  We were usually surrounded by friends.  The food and conversation was good, but it was not family.  We eventually found ourselves making the trek back to Kansas City for Thanksgiving and Christmas most of the time, just because that’s where  family was.

These days, it seems like we’re losing the nuclear family.  With it, we’re losing the traditions that can be passed on to another generation.  Grandma’s pumpkin pie recipe can only be passed down within the family from generation to generation.  It would be lost and changed until it is unrecognizable in the context of a group of friends.

I realize this when I glance through all of the magazine articles about Thanksgiving dinner this year.  Nothing is as I remembered it.  It’s as if everyone is trying to make their recipe the most creative and memorable.  Who needs fifteen variations on  pumpkin pie or pumpkin pie with a chocolate cookie crumb crust.  Who needs bourbon spiced sweet potatoes or stuffing with ingredients you can’t find at your local grocery store?

Thanksgiving is not the time to impress people with your gourmet skills.  It is not the time for a champagne celebration.  It is not a time to substitute friends and acquaintances you have known for a few months for those who have experienced your entire life with you.

It is only among those who know us best:  those who have watched our struggles and viewed our successes, those who have known us at our worst and at our best, those who have cheered us on when everyone else thought we would fail, that we can truly give thanks.  They are the ones who have witnessed the grace poured out on our lives and who know truly how much we have to be thankful for.

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The Most Important Thing

By the time you read this the election may be over. I may or may not have voted, If I don’t it will mark the first time in my adult life that I have not. Sometimes, real life intervenes and pushes politics back Into It’s rightful place, Not that it should ever be at the forefront of our lives but that’s the way life has been recently. It often takes something beyond our control to snap us out of it. In my case, it was my brother James.

We were blissfully on our way to Kansas City last Saturday. Halfway there my phone rang and my husband answered it as I was driving. It was Roy from Auspicion telling us that they had taken James to the emergency room, suspecting he had a stroke.  Since James is developmentally disabled and I am his guardian, we went into panic mode.  It seemed like ages before we found the nearest exit exit to turn around and speed back to Emporia.

Once at Newman, they told us that it was probably just a TIA and we should take him to the doctor on Monday.  All good!  We took him to our house as no one had the key to his apartment.  Twenty minutes later, he was helplessly laying on our living room floor unable to speak or move his right side.  After another 911 call and ambulance to the hospital,  they said he would need to be transported to KU Med Center.

Back in the car again.  At some point, the ambulance passed us.  We were speeding as it was, so they were really booking it.  Before we got to the hospital, a radiologist from KU called and said that James had a massive clot on the brain and they needed my permission to take him to surgery.  We discussed all the possible complications and I gave them my approval, but I was not very optimistic.

My optimism did not change when we got to his room in ICU after he returned from surgery where they removed a massive clot blocking blood flow to half of his brain.  His face was still twisted, he could not use his right arm and it was difficult keeping him still.

During all of these events, my husband was calling friends and posting on social media,  asking for prayers for James, but it was with very heavy hearts and exhaustion that we left the hospital that night.

The next morning, Sunday, we went back to the hospital.  We didn’t rush this time as we were afraid of what we would find.  Having had friends who suffered strokes, I know how difficult recovery can be.  I could not imagine how James, with his limited intellectual abilities, would cope.

As we walked down the hospital hall towards his room, we could see him through the glass window, sitting up in bed with the biggest grin on his face the minute he saw us.  His face was not distorted and he was eating a graham cracker that the Physical Therapist had given him to check his motor skills.

What a day!   We went to church.  They prayed for James some more and we went back to the hospital where his condition continued to improve.  People started coming to visit.  He was still in ICU, but they let two people in, then someone else came, then someone else, and the room became crowded.

“He doesn’t need to be in ICU”, his nurse said, “but we don’t have a room yet,” so the crowd grew.  They moved him out of bed to a chair and several of us used his hospital bed to sit on.  How to describe that room?  It was like the best party I have ever been to.  It included family, old friends we haven’t seen for years and new friends.  It was everything that life is supposed to be.

Some of James’ visitors

As of this writing, I don’t know what the results of the election will be, but it doesn’t matter.  A lot of politicians and Political Action Committees are spending millions, perhaps billions, of dollars to Influence the vote in what is supposed to be the “most important” election of our lifetime.  If that is most important, if that is what our society values most, we deserve the results, whatever they may be.

There is so much more.  There is health, there is family, there are friends, there is faith and hope.  There is love.  This weekend, amid what could have been a catastrophic situation, I experienced all of the things that are most important.  These are the things that determine the quality of our lives, not the result of any election regardless of the issues.  These are the things, not any political agenda, that are worth holding on to.