For your convenience, we have installed the link below to make donations to this website easier. Now you can utilize your PayPal account or your credit card. On Thanksgiving O dessa, Nov. I was pretty young then. Just starting out. And the day became symbolic to me in a patriotic, historic way. Then, after I was married and had kids of my own, Thanksgiving took on a different look for me, courtesy of a perspective that had me participating and observing from the position of parent instead of child or student.
And in fairly short order it became more than a small, immediate-family-unit event, branching into one involving in-laws and the families of my wife's siblings.
It became quite a production. I imagined it was more on the scale of the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving, but with the advantage of a stove and oven. Then, after my children had grown and started testing their wings in the world, death visited my door and left me a widower, and the holiday became one I would try to survive. That first such Thanksgiving, a kind family west of Watkins Glen invited me to their table, and I found myself laughing for the first time in quite a while, and remembering how the day used to be: a family gathering of joy.
The next year, a couple who lived above Watkins to the northeast, near Burdett, invited me to a gathering of friends that was equally as pleasant. And after that, for a string of several years, one of my late wife's brothers invited me and whichever of my sons was home at the time over to his house in Ithaca to dine with him, his wife and neighbors.
I got to know the neighbors on an annual basis -- a "see you back here next year" basis. That gathering faded in time, and now In this year's case, we're considering any one of the available restaurant buffets in the region. After all, the meaning of the day has always included that important component: good food.
