Giving Thanks

Some years ago, when the children who are now as tall as I am were still small, we established a family routine of sharing “thankful things” around the dinner table. In part, this was a replacement for saying grace, which my family did when I was a child. But really it is more an act of focusing, even for a few minutes, on some of the good things in our lives, no matter what kind of day we’ve all had.

Some evenings it is easy to spout off a list of thankful things. Others, of course, this practice is more challenging. On this week of traditional thanks-giving, near the end of a year that has been challenging in many ways, it seems more important than ever to focus, even for a little while, on the good things.  

Thanksgiving is next in 2020’s this-year-it-will-look-different lineup. Since the middle of March, most things have been a bit – or a lot – out of whack. School has been different. Work has been different. Grocery shopping, soccer, visiting friends, going to the doctor, getting a book from the library – all different.

We’ve all adjusted, to varying degrees, to the shifting normal. I no longer forget to don my mask when I head into the post office (although it still feels a little odd). My kids have grown used to longer class periods in school and lunchtime spent six feet away from friends. Last weekend, my family celebrated my dad’s birthday with a woods walk and hot cider sipped around a fire, rather than a sit-down dinner and cake with candles. (I do wonder if I’ll ever again be comfortable eating birthday cake after the guest of honor has blown across it to extinguish candle flames.)

But holidays are different, and I think many of us are feeling a tinge of sadness at traditions set aside, for now, as we head into the first of a string of holidays that normally brighten a literally dark time of year.

My crew is lucky to live within a few miles of lots of extended family. My kids have grandparents around each corner, aunts and uncles down the road, and a cousin across the street. Normally, holidays are a time for blending the local McPhaul and McCarthy branches of the family, with the odd additional out-of-town guest or local friend adopted for the day – and the feast. Our average holiday dinner guest list is usually between 12 and 20, generally tilting toward the higher end.

Our normal gathering place for this particular holiday is my in-laws’ house, which we can reach – literally – by walking over the river (a brook, really) and through the woods. This year, though, along with most other folks, we’ll be marking Thanksgiving in our own homes, without any large gathering.

I bought a Thanksgiving turkey over the weekend for the first time – ever. The kids and I sat down about a week before Thanksgiving to plan out our own dinner-for-five menu. The main event, of course, is the bird. But also included are Gaga’s famous sticky rolls and a dish my kids call “glop,” along with Nana’s Swedish apple pie. While the setting and the company will shift, my kids insist the menu should stay as close to “normal” as possible.  

One tradition we’ll maintain, especially on this day of thanks-giving, is to share our thankful things with each other. In this year of feeling regularly uncertain and unsettled, I’m thankful for many things, including that my children have these family traditions, which will continue to evolve – even if, like most other things, they look a little different this year.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's November 25, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.    

Coming Home

The house on Timber Lane wasn’t, at first, our full time house. It was a relatively rustic retreat we absconded to during summer vacations and winter weekends. Here, the air was a bit crisper, the stars brighter, the mountain views spectacular enough to both calm and inspire. Summer meant warm afternoons at the cool river, hikes over tall mountains, forays into the woods to build forts. Winters were filled with creating giant snow structures, exploring on skis, wood smoke curling from the chimney, and the laughter of friends to warm us.

When my parents retired to the peace of the mountains, the house on Timber Lane became the family home. With my brothers and I grown and thousands of miles away, when we came “home” it was to Timber Lane.  Last summer, with my younger brother and I living within a few miles of my folks and my older brother entering his second decade on the opposite side of this wide country, my folks downsized. They left the house on Timber Lane – some two miles from where my family and I live – and moved just around the corner from us.

We didn’t grow up on Timber Lane, technically speaking, my brothers and I. It wasn’t where we waited for the school bus each weekday morning and concentrated over homework in the evenings. But this was the house my father built, using boards milled from two pasture pines that once stood on the property. It was in this house that we waited impatiently to come down the rough-finished stairs on the Christmas mornings of our childhood, jostling each other for a position that might allow a peek at what Santa had left. It was here that we arose winter mornings in the frigid predawn to head off to ski races, sometimes catching the first soft glow of sunlight pushing up from behind the tall mountains in the east. Here we built campfires for roasting marshmallows and lighting sparklers on the Fourth of July, crafted tiny dams from sand and clay in the stream along the driveway, picked blackberries heavy with sunshine from brambles along the road.

It was here, when I was abroad a decade ago and wandering beyond my mother’s comfort level, that I decided to return – not to the lofty mountains of Colorado or the mesmerizing sea and lilting voices of Ireland, although I hold those places dear. But to a tiny town in northern New England, to a house filled with light and memories. And so in some ways, my parents leaving that house was a bit melancholic for all of us. Yet it was a good move. Their new home is warm and cozy, and I am happy to have them so close. It is an oddity in modern America that my children live literally, if the volume is high enough (and with three small kids, it often is), within shouting distance of all four grandparents.

My children, too, loved the house on Timber Lane in their earliest years. But they’ve moved on to new adventures with the youthful oblivion of little kids. They are thrilled to be able to walk to Nana’s and Poppy’s house, and to help transform it gradually into “home.” Along the way they wander down a lane where blackberries ripen in summer, past places perfect for building secret forts, along a path where their own sweet memories will be made.