Our Thanksgiving dinner table looked exactly the same every year in the 1970s and 80s...and the 90s...and the 2000s

 

Full disclosure: I stole the photo above from the folks at Bob Evans, who want you to know they're basically ready to cater your entire Thanksgiving if you'd like.

But in some ways that image isn't too dissimilar from the reality of my Thanksgivings growing up on Harding Drive. We had a lot of the same foods, and every year we would take a picture once they were all cooked and set out on the table.

The thing is, other than maybe some discoloration from the early years before film technology really evolved, you very likely couldn't tell the difference between the 1972 photo and the 1998 photo.

Or between any two years, really. This is because we ate the same stuff year after year, decade after decade.

Don't get me wrong, it was all tasty stuff, but it never varied.

Which was fine by me, though I always thought it was funny that we took pictures of the same table with the same tablecloth and the same platters of Thanksgiving deliciousness, with no regard to the fact that these images ended up being essentially photocopies of one another.

My mom was a great cook, but she also scored points for consistency.

Terry started attending our Thanksgiving dinners as a teenager. She found it strange that we had turkey and ham and roast beef as options, but we never had homemade pies (they were, she recalls, usually store-bought Marie Callender pies).

To be fair, I always thought it was odd that her family had side dishes like rutabaga on their Thanksgiving table, though for the record, I liked that rutabaga. Some years I think my mother-in-law Judy and I were the only two people who ate it.

Anyway, I miss the Thanksgivings of years past, probably because so many of the people who were there are now gone. So it goes.

I still don't think there's anything wrong with having multiple meats on Thanksgiving, though.

Remembering those who won't be around the Thanksgiving table tomorrow

This isn't that long ago (Thanksgiving 2007, I think), but it seems forever since I've seen my Mom and my sister Judi. That's little Jack on the left.

I am, by almost any measure, someone whose cup overflows with blessings.

I have everything I could possibly need and then some. While I've done nothing to deserve it, God has seen fit to grant me love, health and a ridiculous abundance of material wealth compared with much of the rest of the world.

I am, in short, spoiled.

I am so covered in blessings, in fact, that I seldom think about the rain that has fallen in my life. Granted, there hasn't been much of it, but there have been moments of sorrow along the way. Most have centered on the loss of loved ones: my parents, my oldest sister, my in-laws, etc.

Many people have suffered far worse loss than me, which is why I don't tend to complain about any of it. Death is the final destination for us all. There's no reason to expect it will somehow spare my family.

Still, it's hard not to feel a bit empty the day before Thanksgiving when I consider the unoccupied chairs around our dinner table tomorrow.

There was a time when Terry and I split our Thanksgiving days between my family and hers. We would do our best not to gorge ourselves in the early afternoon at my mom and dad's house so that we would have room for more turkey, stuffing and fixings at her parents' later in the day.

It was exhausting, especially the years we lugged around babies and little kids, but there's not much I wouldn't give to experience just one more of those loud, hectic, food coma-inducing Thanksgivings of years past.

For whatever reason, we humans are hard-wired not to fully appreciate what we have until the time comes when it inevitably goes away. Which is a shame, really.

On the other hand, it makes me that much more grateful for the people who are still around and who will be joining us tomorrow afternoon for food, fellowship and fun. The sadness of those we miss is made somewhat more bearable by the presence of those we love here and now.

If nothing else, that's what each of us should probably take away from the holiday we call Thanksgiving.

I hope yours is filled with blessings, with light, and with love.

Now my heart is full

It doesn't matter if you're unfamiliar with this song by Morrissey. You only need to know the feeling it evokes.

It's the feeling every parent gets when their kids are with them and happy and all is right. You get it on the day they're born. You get it when they're little and in their jammies and you're snuggled up watching Disney movies together. You get it when they're a little older and you start having conversations together about important things. Adult things.

And you get it when they're mostly grown-up and it's Thanksgiving and they're all home and that never happens.

My driveway is as full as my heart today because all of the kids are home at the same time. This, you begin to realize in the teenage years, is an increasingly rare occurrence. It is the way of life that they're going to start spending more time away from home than in it, and that's a good thing. That's the way it should be.

But you miss the jammie-wearing, Disney-watching days. And while you'll never get them back, having them clogging up the driveway, sitting in the kitchen and laughing while they eat pizza together as young adults is the next best thing.

Suddnely you understand a gratitude you hadn't known before. It brings a deeper meaning to Thanksgiving.

And now my heart is full. I hope yours is, too.

The challenge of Thanksgiving when you've just lost weight

So I've been regularly attending Weight Watchers meetings the last several Saturdays in an attempt to get back to (and stay around) my goal weight of 185 pounds.

After losing a great deal of body tonnage a couple of years ago and getting down as low as 172, then ballooning back up into the high 190s, I decided that 185 was probably a comfortable target for me.

Well, actually, Terry and I both decided it would be a good target for me. I value her opinion on matters like this, and she knows I can be wishy-washy when it comes to setting health goals. So she chimed in with a quick and firm "185" when I asked her back in September what number I should aim for on the scale.

So 185 it is, then. I finally reached that goal weight a couple of weeks ago. Yay for me.

Now that I'm back to it, I would of course like to stay there. Which isn't really that difficult most of the year but gets a bit harder over the holidays.

Those holidays, as I'm sure you're aware, include Thanksgiving. The idea of Thanksgiving is to show your gratitude for everything you have by eating unhealthy amounts of turkey and stuffing and putting yourself into a food coma. I'm not sure what the connection is there, but that's the way we Americans do it.

Yet I don't want to do it. Eat a lot, that is. I want to stay somewhere near my daily targeted allotment of Weight Watchers points. That's an awfully big challenge when a table full of calorie-laden goodies is staring you in the face and everyone is saying, "Hey, it's Thanksgiving! You don't have to eat so healthy every day. Splurge for once!"

For most people, that's sound logic. But not for me. I no longer splurge. I cannot splurge. I do not have sufficient self-control to indulge one day and shift easily back into calorie cutting the next.

If I give in and eat whatever I want tomorrow, I'll do it again on Friday. And again on Saturday. And probably Sunday. Then I'll just figure, well, I'm not cut out for this Weight Watchers thing so I think I'll just quit and HEY, PASS THE CAKE!

That's how I am. I know myself. And I also know that it's really not that difficult for me to limit my food intake, even when we're talking about Thanksgiving or just a trip to a nice restaurant. All I have to do it try a little and I'm fine.

Yet dinner spreads like the one I'll face tomorrow still scare me. I never want to compare my situation to that of an alcoholic, but it's the same principle: I cannot have just one big meal. There's no such thing as one big meal for me. I must constantly maintain a healthy diet if I want to maintain a healthy body.

So tomorrow I'll have a little turkey, a small scoop of mashed potatoes, some yams and a maybe a bit of stuffing. I'll eat it slowly and allow it to fill me up, and I'll be satisfied.

And Friday morning my pants will still fit and I'll feel great. I won't feel as if I denied myself and will look forward to my Saturday morning weigh-in at Weight Watchers.

A healthy life is a happy life, folks, at least for me.