My Thanksgiving List: The First 5 Stories

My friend and former colleague Jan Risher often inspires me. She recently was inspired by another friend who told her about his Thanksgiving List – a list of memories to be written and shared around the annual Thanksgiving feast.

The idea is to write a memory for every year of your life. They can be simple memories or times from your life that have “staying power,” as Jan put it. I’ll start my list with one that involves Jan and Thanksgiving. Then I’ll share only four others, because I started this list too late. Consider yourself owed 26 more stories ...

1. Thanksgiving never was a huge holiday for my family. That has been reserved for Christmas. Since college, I only have traveled home to Kansas once for Turkey Day. So, while living in Louisiana, Jan invited me to the annual Thanksgiving feast she has at her house. She opens the front door to welcome almost anyone and everyone who doesn’t otherwise have plans. Thanksgiving for Jan is Christmas for me. I spent longer at Jan’s house that day with what felt like a tour around the world. There was the widest array of people sharing their favorite dishes and laughing and playing games. It was that day I realized the true meaning and value of Thanksgiving.

2. My parents always made family vacations a priority. Sometimes we’d just make the short trip to Colorado and stay an extended weekend among the mountains. But each trip was special. The most memorable of these vacations happened when I was only 7 or 8. My parents woke my brother and I up, and we packed everything into the camper shell of our Ford pickup. They said they didn’t know where we were going, and we believed them. For two weeks, we traveled through most of the country – at least the parts East of Kansas. By the end of the trip, we’d gone to Nashville and the Grand Ol’ Opry, Disney World, all the way up the coast to New York City and Washington, D.C. We even saw Ronald and Nancy Reagan during our brief time in the nation’s capital. Always and forever, I remember so many more details about this trip than I could share. The memories were endless, and sleeping in the back of that pickup on an inflatable pool float was just the beginning.

3. Smurfs were my life when I was 4 years old. They were all I cared about, really. And I had everything with a Smurf on it, including a Big Wheel plastic tricycle. I loved that thing so much, and I rode it up and down in front of the sidewalk in front of our house in Shubert, Nebraska. My favorite times on my Smurf Big Wheel were when my brother, Wade, would give me a boost. We lived at the bottom of a big hill – one we weren’t supposed to climb without permission, I’m sure. One day Wade carried my Big Wheel up to the top of the hill and pushed me all the way down. I’m sure it was a really bad idea at the time, but I remember feeling like I was going a million miles an hour. The memory is so vivid and clear, and it’s one of the first things I remember from my life.

4. When I went off to college, my mom followed me there in a minivan filled with enough belongings to spread across my half of the dorm room. We went shopping and bought some dorm-friendly groceries – Capri Sun, Little Debbie snack cakes and other things I plucked from the shelf. Before she took off to go back home, we went to lunch at the Pizza Hut buffet. I only ate one slice of pizza, half a breadstick and a tiny bit of salad. My mom said, “You’re nervous, aren’t you?” I insisted I was fine, just not hungry. Of course I was nervous, and I just couldn’t admit it. That day has always been a reminder that moms know best.

5. Before I moved to Seattle, I spent several vacations visiting my best friends here. We would hang out for long weekends, and I would return to back to Michigan or Louisiana – depending on where I was living at the time – and try to figure out how I could move to Seattle. One particular trip started with my arrival and meeting my best friend Heather and her fiancé, Mike, for dinner at DeLuxe. We sat at a table in the bar area and ordered Washington Apple martinis. I can still taste them (and not just because I now live about six blocks from the DeLuxe). Mike didn’t know me very well, but he knew how much Heather meant to me. And how much I meant to her, I soon would learn. As we sat and laughed, Mike asked me to do the honors and perform their wedding ceremony. It was my honor. The next year, another incredible memory was made when I returned to Seattle as an online-ordained minister to perform an outdoor wedding ceremony to marry two of my best friends overlooking the Seattle skyline. Both of these days are ones I never will forget.