Robert B. Simpson: Thanksgiving reflections

When I was a child, Thanksgiving was a lesser holiday in our family. Dinner might be a little above average, maybe like a special Sunday meal, but not a huge feast. The wealthy might have turkey. We had chicken, caught from our own little flock, cooked and served with our own vegetables. It was a day free of school; that was always a plus. But extravagant dinners and large family gatherings were not a normal component.

Not until I was an adult and in the Army did I come in contact with huge feasts at Thanksgiving. The Army went to great lengths to have elaborate Thanksgiving dinners prepared in mess halls all over the world and served to the troops despite sometimes awful conditions. Those separated from families might miss the warmth of their presence, but they did get to enjoy a lot of delicious food.

I'd been a bachelor in the Army for 10 years when I got married and finally learned the real heart of Thanksgiving. My bride had no special previous culinary training but, self-taught, she rapidly became an outstanding cook, one of those people with an instinctive "feel" for whipping together taste-pleasing meals. I often smiled at the thought of the old cliché, the young fellow who wishes his wife could cook as well as his mother did. My mother thought my wife was the best cook she'd ever known, and she loved to share a meal at our house.

For many years, all of my closest relatives journeyed to our home, wherever we happened to be that year, for Thanksgiving. My wife, after working full time at her job, would whip up a tantalizing meal to greet them as they arrived on Wednesday night, then prepare the typical Thanksgiving dinner, with her special touches, for the next day. And follow that with plentiful food throughout the long weekend. But I learned from these gatherings that the food, although delicious, was simply the enhancer, the magnet that drew together the real core of Thanksgiving, the gathering of family.

Years passed, as they will, and the number of relatives shrank, as it does. My wife became an invalid, no longer able to cook. So for most of the last 18 years, I took over that chore in her place, which was something like having a local house painter's helper take over from Michelangelo to finish that project on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Still, we managed to survive my routine meals, and I also continued the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner, only now for a much smaller gathering of some half-dozen of us. The warmth and togetherness of family was still the key.

This year things will change again. My son and I will travel to Michigan to share Thanksgiving with my daughter, Stacey Duke, and her family and other relatives. Fortunately, she inherited her mother's culinary gene, along with several other positive attributes, like energy, resourcefulness, and quick thinking. Unfortunately, she recently broke a bone in her right hand and it will be in a cumbersome splint through the remainder of the month. A lesser person, I for example, might cringe at preparing Thanksgiving dinner for 13 people under the circumstances, but she seems to thrive on challenges.

I told her I'd recently read in the Ledger that some consider hosting 13 guests for a meal to be unlucky. She immediately solved that problem by saying she'd just count one of the kids as half a guest. After all, they don't consume all that much. As for me, I was just thankful I was not the one getting downsized.

Robert B. Simpson, a 28-year Infantry veteran who retired as a colonel at Fort Benning, is the author of "Through the Dark Waters: Searching for Hope and Courage."

This story was originally published November 22, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Robert B. Simpson: Thanksgiving reflections ."