"Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life."
― Joan Didion
Thanksgiving week is always an emotional time for me. Not sure why that might be.
This year it's more so, with all these empty seats around the table. Laura, Sonny, Uncle Pat, and of course Mom. All added to a list that only moves in one direction, only grows.
For years, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday of this week in November I'd load the Excursion with kids still in pajamas, dragging pillows and blankets across the driveway, and set off in the predawn darkness for the thirteen hour drive to Texas. My parents had given the gift of choosing to retire only a few miles apart in the north Dallas suburbs, which allowed both households to spend time with the boys. Mom's house usually was the more quiet of the two, with maybe Katie and one of Bobby's sons and grandchildren. Dad and Johnnie's house was more lively, with Johnnie's tribe of all ages playing and fighting and, if they were over eighteen, drinking a lot of beer. I was always careful to balance the amount of time spent at each home, hoping to avoid leaving either parent feeling slighted.
This week, with Mom ensconced in the columbarium and Dad ranting at the world from his worn wingback chair, we will fly east early on Thursday morning, cats in the back of the plane, and join Issac and Olivia and the Reeves for their annual Thanksgiving blowout. We've been welcomed into their family home many times over the last few years, whether for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter. It's become a welcome invitation for us, and maybe especially important for me as we rebuild holiday rituals in this blended family.
But this morning I remember the headlights hitting the front of Mom and Bobby's old house on Parkwood in McKinney, the big two-story number they sold when Mom became too infirm to navigate the stairs. I remember the crack of the pool balls as Bobby patiently tried to teach Jim how to play pool, hours spent telling Mom about life and work and all the goings on back in Panama City. She always seemed interested, my biggest fan.
This morning in the NYT Margaret Renkl's essay grabbed me, a meditation on the complicated love we share for the South, with all its contradictions and bloodstained history.
"Drive down a highway in your own homeland, the golden autumn light pouring around you and the golden leaves tumbling in the passing rush of air, and tell me your heart doesn’t fill up with love and longing. Tell me you could keep your heart from filling up with love to the throbbing point of longing. Even a heart entirely broken comes back for more breaking when the source of heartbreak is home."
We'll take off early on Friday headed that way, back to Wyldswood and the panhandle and people and places that have been a part of our lives for decades. We roll our eyes at the political climate there, vow to create our own utopia elsewhere, then return like some migratory bird with a preprogrammed compass whose needle always points south.
Sitting here in a room streaked with bright yellow light from the 27 degree morning outside, in a place so beautiful it takes my breath away every time I drive the winding road up through the mountains from the valley to the lake. Part of me longs not just for those who won't be around our table this season, but for the spanish moss and singing frogs and moonlight through Peg's pine tree sentries that survived the storm. This is all lovely; it'll be nice to come home.
Love you