Faith Works 11-21-20

Faith Works 11-21-20

Jeff Gill

Giving thanks for most everything

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From 1970 to 1980 we went at least once a month to Grandma's house, after Grandpa's unexpected death shortly after his retirement as a school superintendent. Grandma never learned how to drive, and while the village market was still open in those days, four blocks away, there were a variety of things Mom needed to do for her (or have Dad do).

It was never something we questioned, just what had to be done. I got a line on the attendance chart in the Sunday school class there (even though I certainly never got perfect attendance, there or back home), and grew accustomed to the midnight train across the street whose lights brilliantly lit up the study with day bed where I slept at Grandma's.

And there are pieces of the experience that stick with me in all sorts of ways in memory. The Sunday dinner at 1 pm around Grandma's big table, and the meal on the way home at about 7:30 pm, always as the roadside diner was closing up so we got whatever entree was left from Sunday's earlier rush. Grandma would offer us sandwiches on the way out the door, but it was usually dark about halfway on the three and a half hour trip, so Dad didn't want to stop and eat at a picnic shelter and Mom didn't want to cook when we got back after 9 pm, so the truck stop it always was, an interesting coda to the more formal, on china, pot roast or fried chicken at Grandma's.

Now my wife and I make a trip every other weekend to help her 91 year old father. There is no question you can ask about "have you suggested to him that he…" which hasn't been discussed and firmly rejected. Let's just say he's in the home he's known for over forty years, and he's fine, just fine, but between hearing and eyesight there are things that aren't fine, and we handle the supplies and stocking with his attentive assistance. We aren't moving back to Indiana, and he's not coming to Ohio (nothing personal, Buckeyes!) so we visit, one or both of us, about as often as it takes a quart of milk to either run out or go bad.

It's a three and a half hour drive as well, but with interstate highways and satellite radio and such we don't stop, which in an era of COVID is a handy thing. I truly cannot imagine doing this with four kids in the car. When our Grandma trips began the youngest of us was out of diapers, blessedly, and then I left home in 1978 and only erratically made the trip on my own after that, more often when she grew ill and died in 1982 but during those years my mom and dad went even more often, of course, and then taking care of the house kept them driving down frequently a few more years.

Because of coronavirus, and our care of my father-in-law, we are keeping very much away from people in general, with all the Zooming and texting and emailing that's become so common in work and is working better than we ever realized in the old days of, what did they call that, in person meetings? Remember those?

And my little sister is now a grown professional who has our Mom in her house, caring for her there, near but still another hour and a half from where my wife and I shuttle to look out for her Dad. There's no good squaring of this circle for Thanksgiving, and phones or video are going to have to carry the heavy lifting as we prop up what traditions we can this year.

What I am still quite thankful for is that we can care for our parents, as they cared for theirs. They will not live another ninety years, either or both of them, but they have plenty of vim and vigor and memories to share that are irreplaceable, even if we sometimes have to work to break out of a certain set of stock stories, oft repeated. So we protect them and will distance as needed and communicate as we're able now. Would we have gone to Grandma's less often if we'd had more than a tinny long distance connection back then? I doubt it.

But today, even if we can come together, we shouldn't. So we make the connections we can, and give thanks for what we have together, even apart.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's learned almost every parallel there is to I-70 across the Midwest. Tell him about your Thanksgiving at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.