Thanksgiving Connections

Growing up in Texas, the first signs of fall were a big deal for me. Fall is my season. After the long, hot summers, which seem to have become even longer, I am eager for cool weather to play with my spirit, and though I don’t like anticipating my life away, I look forward to Halloween and Thanksgiving. Of course, fall is the time of harvest, the time for gathering. In my part of Texas, we don’t see much that distinguishes the changing of the seasons. There’s nothing to support romantic notions of changing leaves or smoke wafting from chimneys. In the city you can’t even burn leaves anymore, one of my favorite fall experiences when I was growing up. I love All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints Day, that Sunday in church when we chorus, “For all the saints, who from their labor’s rest/who thee by faith before the world confessed.” Though I have no cultural connection to the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos—Day of the Dead—which traces its roots to Mexico’s Aztec ancestry, I am at least a little fascinated by the celebration that focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and relatives who have died. In a few days we will gather as family and friends to give thanks for our blessings, and again we will remember those who have joined the company of saints, those with whom we have shared Thanksgivings past.

A couple of days ago, a cousin that most likely I’ve never met asked me for some family history from my Texas German maternal side. Her mother and my mother were first cousins. She found her way to me by searching on the Internet for my Grandma Lizzie Fuchs’s name. How wondrous this connection we humans have—blood and otherwise—that brings us together, sometimes for reasons that might just go by unrecognized. How good it feels to be reminded that I know something about from where and from whom I come, that I have a heritage that can easily be traced to Europe. I know that my great grandmother, Louisa Benfer Fuchs, celebrated her first birthday and learned to walk on the crossing from Prussia to Galveston, Texas in 1866. And I am grateful that my mother’s interest in talking about her family translated to me.

These days I live relatively far away from what has been familiar for most of my 65 years. I have traded the Gulf Coast, whose power extends far to the north of the coast, for the high plateau of New Mexico, situated at 7000 feet and at the base of mountains whose Spanish name translates in English to Blood of Christ. In a city of 70,000, I have no family, although I have paternal cousins I haven’t seen since they were young children and I was a recent college graduate. Aside from the Hollis blood we share, nothing connects us. We have no history of affection, nothing to stir us to caring about one another. Some 15 years ago, as my cousin Jimmy lay close to death in this small city—a still young man—I was visiting here with friends over Thanksgiving. I called Jimmy’s home to say hello, knowing that he was seriously ill, yet not having seen him for close to 30 years. His grown daughter answered the phone. I gave her my name, told her that I was Jimmy’s cousin, and asked if she knew who I was. “No,” she answered simply, and then she put her mother on the phone. Jimmy was too sick for visitors. Recently I went looking for his grave, only to discover that he lies at the feet of his father-in-law, but there is no marker noting his presence.

So this email message two days ago out of the blue from a 3rd cousin in Texas that I’ve never met, asking for information about my mother’s side of our family, was delightfully welcome. Perhaps I will never meet this cousin. Most likely, our connection will be brief, once I have supplied her with the information about her grandfather’s siblings that she wants to pass on to her own children some day. I suppose it doesn’t really matter all that much. What does matter is that we have connected, if only in passing. The need to know something about from where and from whom we come is important, even if it’s limited to knowing something about your Grandpa Willie’s sisters and brothers. I remember Great Uncle Willie only a little. I remember that he was a farmer, that he and his wife, Donie, had a large bunch of children. Hanging on a wall upstairs in my Texas barn home is a photograph of Louisa and some of her brood, including Willie, most likely a teenager, he and his older brother each astride a horse. I remember Uncle Willie’s funeral on a hot, late-summer day. It was in the country, probably a Baptist church, constructed of clapboard covered in white asbestos siding. Why Willie, who was raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran by a first generation German Lutheran, was buried from a Baptist church, I don’t know. He had died after a long siege with cancer. Uncle Willie’s only surviving child, number 10 and the youngest, is now 64. She was 12 at the time of his death, and six at the time of her mother’s death. I wonder what she remembers about her daddy’s funeral. Maybe, in the course of connections, I will hear from her, and I will ask her.

It is time once again for us to try to overcome all that separates us and give thanks. Those who are blessed to be with their kin probably don’t realize the extent of their blessing. Those who have created family that isn’t connected by blood—the ones who for the most part choose with whom they celebrate—maybe they think about this a little more. Maybe they don’t take familiarity as license—well, for anything. When I returned to Santa Fe several weeks ago, I was resigned to tough it out for Thanksgiving, to be alone on this my most favorite holiday, cast in my most favorite time of the year—if no one invited me to share their table. As it has turned out, I have received five invitations. How blessed am I. Although I will join a friend, cornbread stuffing in hand—that is my assignment—I will begin the day as a Kitchen Angel, helping a large group of regular and ad hoc volunteers put together the lunch that will be delivered to our 80 clients. The kitchen manager has assigned me cornbread dressing, using my middle sister Sue’s recipe, a recipe Sue has adapted from our Mamaw Hollis, a true East Texas cook. Connections are happening all over this Thanksgiving landscape, and I embrace all reminders of what it means—what is feels like—to belong and to have the opportunity to share our blessed bounty.

Thanksgiving Connections—Santa Fe, New Mexico (November 23, 2008)
R. Harold Hollis