Our sons were teens and we had to coax and cajole them to set off on a Thanksgiving trip to my sister Sally and brother-in-law Dirk's house on the Olympic peninsula. We further enticed my older son, Zach, sixteen at the time, by allowing him to drive our brand new car. Hot stuff!
This car, for all of us but especially for Zach, was an incredible improvement from our 1970 pumpkin orange Datsun station wagon which he'd inherited. Talk about uncool! But Zach was OK just to have access to wheels, finally. That Datsun was the car I'd driven all the way through graduate school. One lousy feature of that car was I had to fill the radiator ever fifty miles, big deal right? Well the metal bar that was designed to hold up the hood had snapped off and so I had to prop up the hood on my head to fill the radiator. Remember this was through two winters in the Seattle area: rain, sleet and more rain, fog and a couple of snowstorms while I was attempting this feat.
We thought our son was a new driver and we worried, trying hard not to be back seat drivers. He was surprisingly adept. Years later Zach confessed to us that he'd been driving on the country roads since he was twelve. Then when he was fifteen, he got busted. One of his friend's fathers said, "Hey, Zach, I saw your orange Datsun driving itself down the road!" Zach was embarrassed and should have been. "I knew that wasn't possible, so..." Turns out our son would drive into town and duck whenever a car was coming the other way. Not the best strategy for an illegal driver.
So we let him drive and the trip was going well, we made the ferry with seconds to spare and drove on to the Olympic Peninsula as it proceeded to get colder and colder. Then, with the gently falling snow we stopped, amidst protest from Zach, and Mr. G took the wheel. Snow on top of snow on top of snow ensued and we drove slower and slower noticing fewer and fewer cars on the road. Having done this trip dozens of times we knew that what was coming was the biggest challenge: Lake Cresent with the ten mile long twisty road, complete with zigzag switch backs and logging trucks either hurling by at dizzying speeds or on your butt coaxing you forward.
"Honey, don't you think we should stop and see if it lets up?" I said. "No," he said, "I really think we need to get there as soon as possible. It could get much worse and it's getting dark." So onward down the road, closer and closer to Lake Cresent we drove. We beheld trees bowing down with the great weight of the wet snow, bending into the road. We hardly spoke or even breathed at the sight, the stillness, all of the white contrasting with the dark green visible tree limbs in the forest. Although it was close to sunset, it was dazzling bright with the snow, illuminating the drive. Had I not been so frightened it would have been enchanting. I kept picturing getting hopelessly stuck or hit by an insecure driver. "This is great!" said our younger son Josh from the back seat, clearly not sharing my nervousness. "I still don't see why I couldn't drive" said Zach, as though we were the most unreasonable people on earth.
We made it, I almost kissed the snow covered ground and fell into my sister's house with gratitude. Usually the four of us slept on the floor of one of our nieces' bedrooms but this Thanksgiving one of their neighbors allowed us to stay in their house just down the road. We entered their tidy little house and as we unpacked the Zach and Josh said, "hey, no TV, what's up with that?" and "there's nothing to do here, oh, wait a minute Josh said, "there's a chess board." "OK," said Josh, "you're on, let's find the chess pieces and I'll pound you." "No way," said Zach "I'll kick your butt." The testosterone levels frequently dictated this level of banter about not only chess but anything that might be construed as a contest. In the fifth grade both of our boys had Mr. Westphalen who taught all of his students to play chess, bless him. So suddenly things were less grim even though the board was miniscule they were newly enthused and I was relieved. Alas, search though the might, there were no chess pieces in the house. "Surely your Uncle will have chess pieces, let's trudge over there and get them, " I said.
It turned out that their Uncle had no chess game either and told them "the girls were not interested so I never pursued chess with them." This was very disappointing to the boys. Instead the girls, all four of them were eager to play games with their cousins. Our boys were just as eager to brag about the music they knew testing to see if their older cousins found this too cool also. The little girls, only six and seven years old, attempting to fit in offered their grade school music. Games did take place, Bogle and Scrabble, Parchessi, along with the hot competition on who's music was the coolest.
With no chess pieces to be found I thought that would be the end of it. Not so. Zach and Josh determined to have their match, laboriously made their tiny King, Queen, knights, and pawns out of pieces of card board. Game after game was played. I can't remember who was declared the winner, but this gave new meaning to the phrase, "where there's a will, there's a way." I wonder if those small moments of determination, camaraderie and creativity mean as much to my sons as they did/do to me.
This was only one of the memorable Thanksgivings, we went back and forth, the Milici's and the Grouts sharing this holiday from the early 70's until early in the 2000's when all of the girl nieces were married and our guys also. Then with the advent of grandchildren our families just got too big to be in one household.
On Thanksgiving this year we, many of us, met at niece Vail and Jonathan's house. It was a splendid feast and absolutely the best--- only five miles away for us. One family traveled from L.A. by car, (!) the others walked on the ferry traveling from Seattle. Like so many of you we hadn't seen the LA family since 2019. Hard to be apart for that long time. Everyone has grown and all of us have aged but the spirit of joy at being together in one place was so very dear and overall really fun and funny. We roared with laughter over some of the pictures that we taken, blessedly not shared here. We played games like gin rummy and then Yatzee which I swear I haven't played for more than 40 years. Very loud exclamations and/or some swearing involved. Someone even got us to start singing Christmas carols although the early date raised a few eyebrows.
Sometime I fantasize about renting a huge cabin or lodge and inviting the entire clan for one last huge wonderful, joyful Thanksgiving. There would be many games, horsing around, great food and singing...
Love you all.
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