Monthly Archives: November 2011

Every Picture Tells a Story: Please Schedule Your Mammogram

30 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Healthy Life

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I had every intention of writing something lighthearted for this, my last daily post as part of BlogHer’s NaBloPoMo challenge. But my heart isn’t feeling all that light right now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about living daily life and writing, it’s this: I can’t fake it. This afternoon, a friend is accompanying me while I undergo a screening mammogram.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a screening mammogram is like needing to have your senior pictures retaken because they turned out so awful the first time. Earlier this month, I had my routine annual mammogram. And for the second year in a row, I received a call several days later informing me that the radiologist wanted a “do-over.” Something on the film of my right breast looked—what was the word I heard when the technician called me?—suspicious? Unusual? I can’t remember. I stopped listening clearly shortly after she identified herself on the phone. Panic, I suppose.

My adventures in good health and otherwise are long and complicated—far too complicated for a single post—so for now I’ll focus only on this new development. Last year, I was relieved when the films came back negative. This year, I’m hoping for the same result. I had no symptoms then, and I have none now, other than the usual annoyance of fibrocystic disease, which was diagnosed when I was in my twenties.

Regardless of today’s outcome, I’ve decided that I will share the experience on my blog. Why? Two reasons, mostly. First, because breast cancer is probably the top rung of the worry ladder for millions of women. Estimates for 2011 from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health predict that there will be 230,480 new cases of breast cancer among women; 2,140 among men. (Yes, men can get breast cancer, too.) Deaths this year are estimated at 39,520 for women, and 450 for men.

Second, I believe that it’s in your best interest to have useful and important information, so I’ll be telling more of my story in future posts. If telling my story prompts someone to get to the doctor for a long overdue visit, or to begin to take seriously the reminders to perform self-examinations each month, then that’s a good thing.

My own history is such that it necessitated regular mammograms at an age earlier than what is considered the norm, despite the fact that neither my mother nor her sister ever developed the disease. (I’m an only child, so as canaries in the mine go, I’m it.)

You would think I’d be used to all this rigmarole by now, but I’m not. I’m a bit apprehensive today, and that’s normal.

Here’s hoping my films will be normal, too.

And you out there. Yes, you. The one reading this and thinking, “You know, I guess I should call and schedule my appointment, but I’m just so busy right now…”

Guess what? You’ll always be busy. Don’t panic, but please make time for this; it’s important.

This has been a public service announcement from The Midlife Second Wife.

Mimi’s Marinara Sauce With Meatballs and Sausage

29 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Food for Thought

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This recipe for marinara sauce with meatballs and sausage, a family favorite, has been in my cooking repertoire since the Carter Administration, which is to say a very long time. I’ve made a number of adjustments and refinements to the original recipe over the years, chief among them the addition of dry red wine. I love cooking with wine—it’s such a generous thing to do for your dinner guests! The Clemenza cooking scene in The Godfather provided the inspiration for this enhancement—after the movie was released on video I had a chance to study his method—so I suppose we ought to thank Francis Ford Coppola. (He produces his own wine, too.) You’ll notice, however, that I don’t precook the meatballs or the sausage before adding them to the pot; they get cooked along with everything else, since the sauce simmers at least four hours on the stove. I tried precooking the meat only once, and found that the sauce took on an entirely different flavor. I prefer my method, since it retains the tenderness of the meat and prevents it from drying out, but by all means, adjust this recipe to your own tastes. You might also wish to substitute turkey sausage and turkey meatballs for the red meats shown here. As my Grandma Monia used to say: Mangia!

MIMI’S MARINARA SAUCE WITH MEATBALLS AND SAUSAGE*

1 large (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes (I prefer San Marzano Italian plum tomatoes)
3 12-ounce cans tomato paste
water
salt, freshly-ground pepper, and garlic salt to taste
one-quarter cup sugar
one-half to 1 cup dry red wine, such as Chianti or Cabernet Sauvignon
one-half cup grated Parmesan cheese, or to taste**
1 and one-half pounds hot Italian sausage, cut into 4-inch sections
1 and one-half pounds sweet Italian sausage, cut into 4-inch sections
2 pounds ground chuck
4 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup chopped Italian parsley
6 eggs
4 cups (approximate) seasoned Italian bread crumbs
1 cup (approximate) grated Parmesan cheese**
salt and freshly-ground pepper

I begin by making the meatballs so that they’re ready to add to the simmering sauce.

In increments, so that everything is blended well, combine ground chuck, garlic, chopped parsley, eggs, breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper. (If you prefer, substitute garlic salt for the garlic in the meatballs.) Keeping a small bowl of water nearby, wet your hands and break off the meat into about 2-inch pieces, rolling into meatballs. Continue the process, wetting your hands as you go. (Take a look at the picture above; the meatball simmering in the pot is the size you’re going for. And take care not to overdo it with the breadcrumbs; you want the meatballs to adhere, but you don’t want them to be dry.) When all of the meatballs have been made, set aside in the refrigerator in a covered bowl.

Chop the canned tomatoes and put them in a large pot, adding one can of water and three cans of tomato paste. Stir well to combine, then add water to the pot until you’ve filled the pot slightly halfway. (Too much water and your sauce will be thin and, well, watery. Plus, when you add your meat and the sauce begins to boil and then simmer, too much water will make the sauce boil over. Trust me: you don’t want that.)

Over medium heat, begin bringing this mixture to the boil, adding salt, pepper, garlic salt to taste along with the sugar before it gets to the boiling point. (Let your taste preferences be your guide in terms of how much seasoning to use. I sprinkle everything fairly liberally to begin with, stir and simmer, and then check my seasonings a couple of times throughout the cooking process.) Add the wine and the Parmesan cheese to the sauce, and stir well, bringing to a boil.

Add the sausage to the sauce.

Add the meatballs to the sauce.

Return everything to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer slowly for four hours. Continue to stir the pot, using a wooden spoon, and scrape up from the bottom in case you’ve let the heat get too high and the sauce starts to burn. The secret here is a SLOW, STEADY SIMMER. If your dinner is delayed for some reason, one of the beautiful aspects of this recipe is that you can keep this pot of sauce simmering for an extra hour. Make sure that you cook it for the full four hours, though, because you want to make sure that your meat is done. Check the sausage before serving; if it’s pink inside, keep simmering it, and the sauce, until done.

This is a hearty sauce, so serve it over a substantial pasta like rigatoni, rather than a delicate angel hair pasta. Toss together a green salad, add a loaf of crusty Italian bread, and mangia!

*Mimi is John’s nickname for me.

** A word about the Parmesan cheese. If I’m economizing (and aren’t nearly all of us economizing?) I’ll use Kraft grated Parm. But on the rare occasions when we’re splurging, I’ll grate fresh Parmigiano-Reggianno cheese for this recipe; I firmly believe in using the freshest, best ingredients that one can afford, and there’s nothing like the real thing.

P.S. Your entire house will smell amazing while you’re cooking this sauce!

To the Middle and Beyond! (What Will We Do with Longevity?)

28 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Midpoints, The Healthy Life

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All right, it’s time for a reality check. Unless I live to be 110, I’m technically past my midlife shelf life—so far over the rainbow as to be nearly under it. (But what was I going to call this blog, anyway? The Over-the-Hill Second Wife? The Old Second Wife? To Infinity and Beyond with the Midlife Second Wife? These are hardly euphonious, and the first two less than complimentary.) I was reminded—painfully—of the disparity between my chronological age (55) and a more accurate midpoint (say, 40 or so), this morning while catching up on my local newspaper reading. The Richmond Times-Dispatch runs a monthly column, “Viva the Vital!” by a boomer named Matt Thornhill; he’s president of the Boomer Project, based here in my adopted hometown. The Boomer Project provides advice and information about our robust demographic to organizations and corporations. For example, did you know that we Boomers and our elders spend $3.5 trillion dollars annually on goods and services? But back to Thornhill and his Thanksgiving Day column. He started things off with a quote by comedienne Rosanne Barr, who said: “C’mon, I ain’t living to age 106, so I am waaay past the halfway point.”

Ouch. Thanks, Rosanne. Thanks, Matt. No, really—thanks. Because this got me thinking—always a good exercise when writing a blog.

Many of us in our 50s and 60s don’t feel old. Do we? And if we’re careful and follow all of the good advice out there, Thornhill reminds us that thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and technologies, the new normal is such that we could very well live—and live well—into our 80s and beyond. And if such is the case, we’ve got a good 20 to 30 years to fill.

It’s nice to have the extra time. But what are we going to do with it?

Thornhill writes that he and his colleagues at the Boomer Project “believe that boomers are going to fulfill their ‘promise’ as a generation by individually living out their own personal promise or agenda.” You might recall that ours is the generation that intended to change the status quo in the 1960s. Thornhill quotes Tom Brokaw, who famously chronicled our generational predecessors in The Greatest Generation. Apparently Brokaw thinks that we baby boomers squandered our opportunity to make a lasting, positive difference in the world.

I’m happy to read that Thornhill disagrees with Brokaw’s assessment. And here’s where we can take up the challenge. If you believe, as Thornhill does, that we still have the opportunity, in the next 20 years, to apply “our collective wisdom and experience from our ever-increasing trips around the sun, [then] our legacy as a generation is in front of us.” We can effect positive change on “companies, organizations, governments, each other and other generations,” as long as we “live our promise.” And Thornhill believes that it is our personal promises, as boomers, that will make the difference; he predicts that most of them will be outwardly focused.

What is your promise—to yourself, your family, your community? I’ve already made one or two—and I should mention that these are nothing like New Year’s resolutions. When the opportunity is appropriate, I’ll share my promise on the blog. But I would love to know what the boomers among you think:

Did we, as a generation, blow our chance to leave a lasting and positive legacy? Or is the best, as Frank Sinatra sang, yet to come?

Still Life With Bone Scan

27 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Life Poetic

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Négatif

Image via Wikipedia

Still Life with Bone Scan

She is smaller than
before.
Tomorrow
she’ll be smaller still,
aging into herself,
erasing her self.

The doctor’s
at the door,
in his hands, an analog
of her.
It’s smaller still—
this negative image,
this paper doll—
her skull coyly tilted
to one side, defenseless,
her arms stretched wide.

Hiding, the tumor—
benign but not benevolent—
in what he called
“a symbiotic kinship
with the brain.”

How far removed, this
milky miniature, this flattened
pattern of a mother?
How far removed
from she who strode
through rooms in
Sicilian joy or aggravation,

who posed on the DeSoto’s hood—
perfectly manicured and coiffed—
an elegant arm draped
over my father’s shoulder,
smiling at the camera?

Sorrowful mother,
small amid the chalky sheets,
(the wires translating
each heartbeat onto a screen,
yet another analog)

the fact of her life
as lines on a graph.

Homeward Bound: A Visit to the Flight 93 National Memorial

26 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Midpoints, Transitions

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Ten years, two months, and 26 days ago, 33 passengers and seven crew members of United Airlines Flight 93 were flying to San Francisco. For some of them, San Francisco was home; for others, it was a business destination or a layover en route elsewhere. We know, of course, what happened that day: none of them reached their various destinations. On our way home, following a Thanksgiving gathering with our children, John and I took a brief detour on the drive through Pennsylvania to the rural hamlet of Shanksville. We wanted to pay our respects to those souls lost when the hijacked plane went down in an open field, following the valiant efforts of many passengers and crew members. Those heroic people very likely saved the U.S. Capitol from a terrorist attack on that devastating day of tragedy. The Flight 93 National Memorial, if you have yet to make the pilgrimage, is a place like no other. I have not yet collected my thoughts about the experience; all I can tell you is that my heart was literally heavy as we drove the long, winding road toward the memorial marking the site. I took a few pictures, and, for now, will let them speak for me. We are home and glad to be home, and mindful of those who were unable to complete their journeys.

The marble slabs, engraved with the names of the victims, mark Flight 93's flight path before it crashed.

A broad-planked wooden gate separates the memorial from the boulder which marks the crash site.

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Black Friday? No Thanks. Just Black Coffee with Cream and Time with Family

25 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Money Matters

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So here I am, on what used to be known as the day after Thanksgiving but is now generally referred to as Black Friday. I’m sitting in my son’s girlfriend’s sweet little house, and we’re chatting, drinking coffee with cream, and marveling at the myriad e-mails stuffing our inboxes—advertisements for deep-discounted this, Black Friday that, and get ‘em before they’re gone whatevers.

Whatever.

I understand—and sympathize with—the fact that many people have a real and serious need in this economy to hit the stores in the wee hours to obtain the best deal possible on Christmas gifts for their families. We’re in that boat, too. But I can’t bring myself to enter a store at midnight. I barely enjoy shopping during normal hours. I suppose this is my age speaking; when I was young, I used to love to shop.

Money is tight. John and I will figure out a creative way to honor our family during the holidays. And we’ve already given each other our Christmas gift: our impromptu trip to New York City. And so I’m just lollygagging, spending time with Jenny while Matt gets ready for work and John catches some extra sleep. I’m drinking coffee and doing something I rarely have time to do: I’m relaxing. This is a free day, and we’re 500 miles from home. We’ll meet some friends for lunch and more friends at dinner—friends that we haven’t seen in more than a year. There will be no shopping involved. And I’m fine with this. I suspect it might even be good for us in ways other than our wallets.

TIME magazine, in its issue for June 24, 2011, published a fascinating series of articles about money. In J.D. Roth’s article, “Money Can’t Buy Happiness—Or Can It?” he writes:

Experiences tend to make us happier than material things. We have different reactions to the money we spend on experiences and the money we spend on material goods: When we spend on experiences, our perceptions are magnified (meaning we feel happier or sadder than when we spend on stuff), and the feelings tend to linger longer. And since most of our experiences are positive, spending on activities instead of things generally makes us happier.

This I believe: Money can’t buy you love, and it can’t buy you happiness. I am programmed to believe this because I grew up never having much of it. I’m inclined to believe this because I did find love and I did find happiness, two critically important factors to a good quality of life. John says that he’s never possessed so little materialistically since the days early in his adulthood when he was teaching elementary school—and he’s never been happier. The same is true for me. We clip coupons, scrimp, and do without things that have turned out to be wholly unnecessary to our well-being. But time spent with our family is vital to our well-being, and so this trip to Ohio will fuel us with happiness far longer than an iPad would for me, or a summer of Sundays playing golf would for John.

Now, if I could no longer afford coffee, then we’d have a real problem …

Take Three Book Titles, Blend, and Tweet

24 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Reading Life, The Writing Life

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As if it’s not enough work to brine or deep-fry or roast a turkey for Thanksgiving, some people go whole hog and make a turducken: a chicken sans bones stuffed into a duck sans bones stuffed into a turkey. Sans bones. I remember the first time I read about this strange bird, years ago in the New York Times. Each time that I thought it would be fun to try to make one, I remembered how much work it is to clean the kitchen after just one fowl-centered feast, let alone three. But this week I discovered a no-mess, no-fuss method for making turducken, using book titles instead of birds! In a brilliant flash of Twitter ingenuity, Doubleday Books started a hashtag hat-trick for bibliophiles: the literary turducken, or, to be precise, #literaryturducken.

Readers mix together three book titles to craft a zany new concoction. In my opinion, this “top tweet” from the Kansas City Star took the blue ribbon for cleverness, erudition, and wit:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Gone with the Wind in the Willows.

I jumped right into the fray, and Tuesday night, when I should have been sleeping, began tweeting as quickly as I could think of combinations. Here are a few from my own Twitter feed:

Play it as it Lays On the Road Under Milkwood

The Handmaid’s Tale of Two Cities of Salt

ABC of Reading Lolita in the Tehran Conviction

Then I thought I’d put a little spin on the game, playing with titles containing numbers and adding a long poem and a musical theater title into the mix:

The Threepenny Opera in Four Quartets at Slaughterhouse 5

This was fun! It didn’t involve chopping onions, and it satisfied my craving to be creative at Thanksgiving during a year when I wasn’t doing a lick of cooking.

I kept at it:

The Invisible Man and Superman It’s Superman!

I’m very fond of this next one, but disappointed in myself for leaving off the article in the McCullers’ title:

Ballad of the Sad Breakfast at Tiffany’s Naked Lunch Café

I raided the theatrical canon for this one:

Krapp’s Last Tape Measure for Measure of the World

I wrote a few more, and finally sleep won out. But the next day, during our long road-trip, I not only occupied myself in the car by adding more to the hashtag, I also got John hooked on the game. He devised this one:

‘Twas in the Heat of the Night Before Christmas the Iceman Cometh

I think that, on balance, the ones I came up with during the day were sharper than the ones I cobbled together while I was starved for sleep. What do you think?

A Farewell to Arms and the Man Who Knew Too Much and Came to Dinner

O Pioneers! How Green Was My Valley of The Dolls?

Death Comes for the Archbishop, the Man Without Qualities, And Ladies of the Club …

Beloved Jazz Song of Solomon

While I was playing—and admiring the literary zip of many other tweeters—I noticed that media outlets were also paying attention. Mashable wrote about the game, as did the Huffington Post. Katy Steinmetz of TIME magazine had a great one:

The Sun Also Rises As I Lay Dying On the Road

It occurred to me that if you’re not on Twitter and hadn’t heard of this phenomenon, this post could be my gift to you: you now have a new game to play on the long ride home after your visits with far-flung family.

You’re welcome.

I hope you and yours had a lovely Thanksgiving.

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Over the River and Up I-95: A Thanksgiving Journey

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life

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After ten hours, 500 miles, and four rest stops—with Sandy, our Cavalier King Charles spaniel alternating between a perch at the back of our RAV IV and my lap—John and I arrived safely in Ohio. We’re staying with my son and his lovely Jenny, whom we haven’t seen since May. It feels wonderful to be here. The kids cooked us a delicious pasta dinner, and we walked all three dogs (they have two) by Lake Erie, across the street from where they live. The air was crisp, and the clear sky was full of stars.

Tomorrow will be the first time John’s sons and mine will be together since our wedding 15 months ago. It’s late, and we’re all tired, so this will be all I have time to write tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!

Of Unadorned Turkeys and Giving Thanks: To Family & Friends, WordPress & Readers

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, The Writing Life, What's the Buzz?

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The turkey was not ready for his close-up. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that the humble bird from our early Christmas with my husband’s sons would, a year later, appear on thousands of computer screens around the world. How’d this happen? Yesterday, the WordPress editor (aka “story wrangler”) plucked this little blog out of obscurity and plopped it onto the site’s “Freshly Pressed” portal—where all good bloggers go to log in. In roughly 27 hours, more than 4,000 people visited The Midlife Second Wife, and 42 new subscribers signed up. The post that generated all of the activity, “Where’s Home for the Holidays When You’re Divorced or Remarried?” attracted 83 comments and 109 “likes” from bloggers.  Gosh. I really wish I’d garnished that turkey.

But this post isn’t about our turkey’s less than glamorous visage, and it’s only tangentially about the blog’s 15-minutes of fame. No, this post is about gratitude. The past 27 hours have been wonderfully overwhelming and deeply humbling. So I hope that you won’t mind if I use this essay to express some well-deserved thanks.

  1. To my son, who e-mailed me before all of the hubbub began, to tell me that he loved the post. Matthew, I’m sorry, but I’m about to have an “I’m going to embarrass you moment.” I love and admire you more than words can say.
  2. To my husband, who was the first to comment, who gives me room and space to write, who champions everything that I do, and who—to quote Paul Child, Julia’s husband—”is the butter to my bread and the breath to my life.” John, I love you.
  3. To my stepsons, whom I love more than they might realize, given the brief time we’ve been flung together and the distance that separates us.
  4. To the editors at WordPress for incredible support of a late-blooming blogger.
  5. To all of my friends and family who signed on at the beginning. You are amazing and I love you.
  6. To every new reader of the blog—all of you who subscribed, felt moved enough by the post to give it your much-appreciated thumbs-up, and decided to follow me on Twitter.
  7. To everyone who posted their comments in response to the blog’s message. You have no idea how you have warmed my heart. Many of you wrote to express your own painful experiences about the way divorce has torn your family asunder; many described your own ways of dealing with the holidays; one reminded me—and I hope everyone reading—that it’s not only divorce or remarriage that can shunt holiday traditions sidewise. The wars in which our country has been embroiled have done their own damage—in countless cases irreparable—to the family gathering at the dinner table. One of you wrote to express your poignant wish that you had the right to marry, too. So do I.

To each of you who took the time to post a comment, I promise to reply. It will take me some time to do so, but it’s important to me. You have done me a great honor by your response to my writing.

To all of you reading this, I promise to make every effort to be interesting, honest, and useful in what I post here. Your time is valuable; I don’t want you to feel you are wasting it by reading me.

Finally, there’s just one more thing I want to say before I leave you today.

I’ve yet to share on this blog my love of French films. I bring this up now because there’s a wonderful line in one of my favorites—Red, part of Krzysztof Kieslowski‘s trilogy Three Colors. The character portrayed by Irene Jacob says:

Je me sens quelque chose d’important se passe autour de moi. (Don’t be impressed; I had to look this up on Google Translate.)

“I feel something important is happening around me.”

For the past several weeks, I have felt as though something important were happening around me. (I’ve felt this way before, when John and I fell in love … when my child was first placed in my arms.) It’s an incredibly potent feeling—a feeling of great positivity and light. My Thanksgiving wish for each and every one of you is this: that you experience this feeling at least once in your lives.

Happy Thanksgiving. And thank you.

Where’s Home for the Holidays When You’re Divorced?

21 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Food for Thought, Relationships and Family Life

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The turkey I prepared in 2010, when my stepsons celebrated an early Christmas with us.

When my first marriage ended, the day before Thanksgiving in 2003, I took a deep breath upon returning from court and began meal preparations for my first major holiday on my own. I set myself (and my raw nerves) to the comforting task of marinating pears for a compote, then started on the bread-sage stuffing. Why? Because for as long as I can recall, I’ve cooked elaborate dinners for the holidays.

During my first marriage, our family shared hosting duties for the holidays, but the times when it wasn’t my turn didn’t mean I was off the hook. I contributed side dishes and desserts to the groaning board so the burden of cooking an entire meal wasn’t borne by the host. That, however, was all in the past. My son would join me, and my cousin, for my first post-divorce Thanksgiving. That was it. Taking the smallest turkey I’d ever roasted out of the oven, I marveled at its lightness. And cried.

One month later, at Christmas, I said goodbye to all that and performed a variation on the theme. My cousin brought her nephew, my son came with his girlfriend at the time, and I rounded out the rest of the table with a young violinist from the Ukraine, who was studying at the conservatory where I worked. She brought her mother along. And, for the first time in my entire life, turkey was not featured on the table. Instead I prepared a standing rib roast from one of Ina Garten‘s Barefoot Contessa cookbooks.

This was my new family dynamic, and the start of a new tradition.

It can’t have been easy for my son, who at the time was in his early 20s. He was now required to divide all of his holidays in two; the first half of the day was spent with his father, the latter half with me. Those mornings and early afternoons dragged on so! It seemed strange to be alone in the house on a holiday. I probably hugged him far too long and far too tightly when he arrived. But so it went, each year, until the year I remarried.

My new husband had taken a job in Virginia, and I was now living nearly 500 miles from where I grew up and lived my entire life—and 500 miles from my son. Whereas holidays had presented a mere logistical inconvenience, now the geographical stakes were raised to challenging heights. Would I be able to spend at least one holiday with him? And what of my husband’s sons? How and when would we see them? The oldest is in graduate school in Illinois; the youngest had just started college in Ohio.

As it turned out, I wasn’t able to see my son at all that first year after our move. His work schedule simply didn’t allow him enough time off to make the trip. I cannot tell you how that rocked me. Things fared a bit better with the other boys; they drove to Virginia the second week of December to have an early Christmas with us. But again, what orbits they had to navigate! The eldest and his girlfriend drove from Illinois to Ohio to spend time with his mother and brother. Then, with his brother in tow, he drove from Ohio to Virginia. Then it was back around and up to Ohio to drop his brother off, and westward to St. Louis, so his girlfriend could see her family. And back to Illinois. It was like a 1930s movie, where a map of the United States with moving, dotted arrows illustrated a character’s travel progression from Point A to Point Whatever. The mind reels.

Last year, John and I decided that it was our turn to give the kids a break and do the driving. We left for Ohio early in the morning the day before Thanksgiving. Once there, we stayed with my son and his girlfriend. John’s sons joined us the next day, and we all enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner together in a suburb of Cleveland. In a restaurant. For Thanksgiving.

That took some getting used to. Never in my life had I set foot in a restaurant on a major holiday; it went against every cooking and baking gene in my body. I had always felt nothing but sadness for Ralphie and his family in A Christmas Story, forced to eat Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant after the Bumpus hounds devoured their turkey.

The meal was traditional enough and tasty enough, I suppose. But that was hardly the point. The goal was to be together: one scattered family gathered for a few brief hours around a table laden with food that might (or might not) allow us (allow me?) to pretend we were in the old homestead, however new that homestead might be.

It was more than enough that we were together and healthy.

It’s true, as the old song says, that there’s no place like home for the holidays. But when you create a new family, and circumstances toss your family hither and yon with no viable base of operations, it helps to remember another song—one that can serve to brighten your thoughts with a clarity that allows comfort and joy to shine through:

Home is where the heart is.