Remixed Family Reunion

Let go of expectations and discover the freedom from want

When I bought my little Vermont farmhouse, I imagined Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving dinners and furnished it accordingly. A thrifted dining room table expands to seat twelve. The metal rails that can hold five leaves squeak when pulled apart for maximum capacity and groan when nested again for two.

I put my adult children on notice—25 and 27 at the time. “You’ve got ten years,” I said. I may have wagged my finger. “Then, I want spouses and grandbabies piled around this table.”

Yikes. Who did I think I was?

It’s foolish to set such expectations— not to mention way out of bounds to require another’s fealty to our vision, especially in matters of the heart like marriage and children. As if desire or devotion could be conjured on demand. As if the traditional family rulebook must be followed.

Freedom from want

Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving is a painting, not a blueprint. The perfect turkey, the perfect place setting, smiles all around. Bah humbug. (sorry, wrong holiday). The painting’s title, “Freedom from Want,” is more instructive.

By Norman Rockwell - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

Last year, we put all five leaves in the table and piled around it for meals and rowdy games of dominoes. This year, my daughter and I will bring Thanksgiving in foil dishes to share with my elderly parents.

Every Thanksgiving is different, and every Thanksgiving has issues. Family dynamics, politics, and travel hassles top the list for the lucky. But when we think of “freedom from want,” we must consider the 47 million people (one in seven households) who worry daily about securing their next meal, not about lumpy gravy one day a year.

Letting go of expectations is the most important thing I’m learning in my midlife rediscovery. Now, as far as Thanksgiving is concerned, as long as I can wear my stretchy pants and the cranberry sauce is scored with jellied lines straight from the can, I’m grateful.

I’m sharing my favorite poem again this Thanksgiving for everyone who craves, as I do, the deep sense of place, home, and family. Enjoy and keep scrolling because sometimes expectations do meet reality. 😉👶💑

Family Reunion

BY MAXINE KUMIN¹

The week in August you come home,
adult, professional, aloof,
we roast and carve the fatted calf
—in our case home-grown pig, the chine
garlicked and crisped, the applesauce
hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine.

Nothing is cost-effective here.
The peas, the beets, the lettuces
hand sown, are raised to stand apart.
The electric fence ticks like the slow heart
of something we fed and bedded for a year,
then killed with kindness’s one bullet
and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering.

In winter we lure the birds with suet,
thaw lungs and kidneys for the cat.
Darlings, it’s all a circle from the ring
of wire that keeps the raccoons from the corn
to the gouged pine table that we lounge around,
distressed before any of you was born.

Benign and dozy from our gluttonies,
the candles down to stubs, defenses down,
love leaking out unguarded the way
juice dribbles from the fence when grounded
by grass stalks or a forgotten hoe,
how eloquent, how beautiful you seem!

Wearing our gestures, how wise you grow,
ballooning to overfill our space,
the almost-parents of your parents now.
So briefly having you back to measure us
is harder than having let you go.

Flash forward. A lot can happen in one year! 🥰

My mom and dad missed last year’s Thanksgiving in Vermont because mom broke her hip in early November and couldn’t travel. My son was there with his new fiancé, who passed the extended family scrutiny with flying colors. “It’s like she’s always been here,” said my nephew. Since then—a grandson, a wedding, and a dancing great-grandmother.

Freedom from Want

No matter where you find yourselves this holiday, remember this: (to paraphrase the poem) “It’s all a circle from the ring” of Ocean Spray Cranberry Jelly …..

With a grateful heart,

Catherine

1. Maxine Kumin, “Family Reunion” from Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief (New York: Viking Press, 1982). Copyright © 1982 by Maxine Kumin. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Source: Poetry Foundation