The Tradition That Got Complicated
Thanksgiving started warm and got complicated, which is true for a lot of families. The honest version of the holiday includes the parts that were hard, not just the postcard.Share on X
Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November. For me it has always been the family holiday, for better and for worse.
It started warm. When I was young we had it at home, just us, and it was good. Later it turned into the holiday where we traveled to see the relatives, and that is where it got complicated. Going down to see the extended family was never the easy, happy thing the postcards promise. The memories around those gatherings get harder the closer you look at them, and I have written about some of that in My Life in Crazytown. Not every family table is a Norman Rockwell painting, and pretending otherwise does nobody any favors.
That is the honest version of the holiday, and I think the honest version is more useful than the greeting card. A lot of people have a complicated Thanksgiving. You are allowed to hold the good and the hard at the same time.
The Cook Who Survived a Prison Camp
My grandfather was a Navy ship’s cook who survived more than three years as a POW. The family warned me he was a curmudgeon. At seventeen I sat down with him anyway and got the whole story.Share on X
There is one bright thread through all of it, and it belongs in the kitchen. My grandfather Hoeffer.
For most of my childhood, all I knew about him was that he had been in World War II and that he loved to cook. He was the cook at every family event, which is the one good reason we made those drives. The rest of the family warned me to stay away from him. They said he was cranky, a curmudgeon, difficult. He had snapped at me a few times, but I was used to worse at home, so it never scared me off.
When I was seventeen, I decided to actually learn who he was. I worked up the courage and walked over. He saw me coming and patted the chair next to him. We talked for hours. What came out was a story far bigger than “a cook in the war.” He had been a ship’s cook on the USS Oahu, then survived more than three years as a prisoner of war in Japanese camps after the Philippines fell, and he came through it without losing the steady, methodical decency that made him who he was. Years later I used his journal to write a book about it, Behind the Wire. None of it would exist if I had listened to the family and stayed away from the cranky old man in the corner.
Why These Stories Are Worth Saving
Here is the writing lesson buried in the holiday, and Thanksgiving is the perfect time for it. The family is all in one room, and most of their stories are not written down anywhere.
The older generation at that table is carrying history. War stories, immigration stories, the story of how the family ended up where it is. They rarely volunteer any of it, and once they are gone, it goes with them. Thanksgiving puts everyone in the same place at the same time, which makes it the best day of the year to ask. Not to interrogate, just to listen, and maybe to record. I almost missed my own grandfather’s entire story because the family told me to avoid him. The afternoon I ignored that advice and sat down with him is the reason his story still exists at all.
So while you are grateful for the meal and the people, be grateful for the stories too, and do something to keep them. A recorded conversation. A few written pages. Anything that means the history does not leave the room when the people do.
How to Spend Thanksgiving
Eat, be grateful, and gather, whatever your version of that looks like. The holiday is about gratitude and family, and those are worth showing up for even when the family is complicated.
Then do one extra thing. Ask the oldest person at the table about something from their life and actually listen. Record it if they will let you. You will not regret having it, and someday you will be very glad you did not let the story disappear. That is the most lasting thing you can take from a Thanksgiving, more lasting than the leftovers.