Different Slants

By Robert M. Katzman Sunday, November 24, 2019

(Undated November 21, 2021)

About 35 years ago, when Joy and I were 36, Lisa was 10, David (now Konee) was 7 and Rachel was 5, a tradition was started within our little family. People don’t actually know when traditions start unless they linger through time like this one. This is that story: 

Once upon a time, in 1985 or so, I was on my second marriage with two young children. But when I was much younger and married to another very young and good person, we had a daughter, Lisa. After the 2nd marriage, on Thanksgiving Day, Lisa was home with her Mom and so she couldn’t be with her younger siblings or Joy and me, and it was sad for all of the five of us.

So, on those rare occasions when I had a bright thought, I suggested to Joy that instead of on a Thursday — like the rest of America — why not change things and celebrate the Thanksgiving Day holiday on the weekend when Lisa was with us? And so “The Sunday Before Thanksgiving” was born, or “TSBTG”.

It began small with the five of us, and was a very lively affair with the children happy with this new American holiday which was uniquely celebrated only in our house, which over time depending where we lived, became a moveable feast. 

It was such a nice time for us, Joy and I made an agreement between us to start inviting very close friends, and maybe a couple of relatives we both liked. 

What this meant was, unlike the rest of the United States where horrible relatives with bizarre personalities HAD to be invited no matter how much they poisoned the atmosphere for everyone else, we had the Freedom of Choice on TSBTG. 

So, therefore this new edict: neither race, religion, politics, gender nor age mattered at all. But if a person was a jerk or a drunk, they couldn’t come to our little party. So, we all had a good time, for decades. About three decades. The average amount of people who celebrated with us became about thirty people. Nice people.

Joy had Multiple Sclerosis and while subtle at first, became a greater factor as time went by. How our original TSBTG holiday evolved was, Joy did all the basic cooking, everyone who was invited brought a dish of something with them, or a dessert, the kids set and cleared the table, and me? I sliced the turkey artfully with my electric knife, then later collected all the trash and washed every single dish. 

A fair division of labor. Fairness was a big factor between Joy and me, and our kids. Not everything in our lives was fair, but between the five of us, it was.

I noticed something as the years went by. Between the time when the first guests began to arrive, like a wave of people pouring through the door, socialized, had dinner, dessert and, barely able to walk, began to recede back into the normal world, three hours went by. Every year, three hours. I thought this was some social rule of physics because it never changed. Maybe this is true for everybody.

The original three children? 

Our Tribe increased. Lisa married Terry and they had Talia and Eli. 

David married Nicole and they had Emjay.

Rachel married Gary and they had Jericho and Jakobi. 

Oh, and in 1996 we adopted Sarah Hannah, now 25, and she’s part of all of this. Tall, beautiful, confident in her future and with her the possibility of more grandchildren lingers in my mind. I told her to take her time.

But when Joy’s cancer was discovered and quickly progressed, her mobility and our choices shrank. She died on Mother’s Day May 14, 2017, a week before her 67th birthday. At least a hundred people came to her funeral, though far away from most of our friends and families, in Racine, Wisconsin. 

Her ashes were scattered by me into a tall waterfall in a remote part of Iceland, in the calm waters of a quiet bay in southern Cagliari in Sardinia, an island west of Italy, and finally, atop a lonely mountain mesa in Israel’s southern Negev Desert, Masada. Joy is now everywhere.

There is a great grey pall that can descend on families when the older people die off and customs disappear. The special uniqueness of the original core group evaporates. So for a while, when Thanksgiving Day came around, and there was no longer A Sunday Before Thanksgiving, nor even the memory of it for me to talk about with Joy, I was terribly sad.

But completely unexpectedly, two years ago, my children — however this came about I don’t know — hard to type this now…the computer’s keys are all under water, it seems…decided that it really was a Family Tradition and needn’t disappear with Joy’s death after all, and TSBTG began again, in Rachel’s house.

This was so wonderful and so painful at the same time, but the humorous aspect of “No Jerks and No Drunks” also continued, and that made me smile.

I will be 72 next April. I doubt I could carry a heavy frozen turkey anymore. I type these words in a silent house about seventy miles north of where The Sunday Before Thanksgiving will be celebrated in another state in a few hours, and where, to my continued amazement, I am now the oldest person in the room. When the hell did that happen? Grampa Bob lingers.

On November 23, 1919, two days before the original of this story was written, I met Nancy Alexander, a graphic artist, teacher, mother of Alex, mother-in-law of Chloe. Couldn’t imagine that two years later she’d still be in my life and me in hers. Since then we have twice driven across America in a cargo van, seeing dozens of art galleries, eating in a vast range of diners and sleeping in truck-stops.

Consequently I write, she paints and when either of us feels bad, we comfort each other. Quite a while ago, however, we fell in love, which considering the holiday this story is about is a miracle to be thankful for as long as we last.

As a storyteller, I find it to be an acceptable cliche that in order to go to see my grandkids, I have to travel over the river, through the woods and plow through an ocean of farms, silos and miles of tall, stiff rows of corn the color of parchment. It can be quite silent here, akin to the sound a single leaf makes when falling from a tall tree. Sitting in my car, my memory is populated by all who aren’t here, anymore. So many. I can hear them, tho’.

Joy wherever you are, be it frozen in some glacier in Iceland, flowing around someone’s sailboat in Italy, or mixed with the sands of the Dead Sea at the foot of Masada in Israel, you are not gone. 

You are the mist in the air.

Yes, maybe my tears can still flow like the Jordan River, but the deep pain of losing you reminds me that I’m still alive and can still feel.

Like me, for a while anyway, among our very good children, the spirit of you continues to dwell among us. 

Happy “The Sunday Before Thanksgiving”, dear Joy. 

Within these thousand words,

You are remembered.

You are loved. 

By many.