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Homes

Front Porch: True road home leads to love and acceptance

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published November 18, 2005

The other night I dreamed I was driving down Lakeshore Drive in November. The air was cold, Lake Michigan dark and raw in the blue autumn twilight.

In my dream, it was Thanksgiving and I was on my way to my family's traditional holiday dinner, a staple of most of my childhood and young adulthood.

It was always a big, noisy, casual, extravaganza held at my aunt and uncle's rambling, turn-of-the-century house in Chicago's Evanston neighborhood.

My Aunt Joan, who long ago devoted her life to helping homeless women, always greeted everyone with a hug and an invitation to gather in the warm, savory-smelling kitchen.

For me, the long drive from the Illinois town where I worked was always part of the celebration. I could feel the city thrumming into high gear for the holiday season as the first Christmas lights twinkled and the department stores, including the flagship State Street Marshall Field's, prepared to unveil their holiday windows.

More importantly, though, was the idea that we were together as a family, something I treasured but also took for granted in that sweet, eye-blink era of youth when grandparents are living, parents are healthy, and cousins are young and rowdy.

I thought this blissful event would go on forever and ever. It started with my grandmother's famous cocktail hotdogs and ended, hours later, with my mother's dangerously sweet pecan pie and the cousins draped on a sofa watching The Sound of Music.

But like any family, the children grew up, the grandparents died, one generation morphed into the next, and we all scattered like stars in a cold, Chicago night sky.

Those family gatherings as we once knew them are long over, but in another sense, I realize they really aren't.

The older I get, the more I know deep in my soul that Thanksgiving is about going home. So many of us no longer live where we were planted, but we always manage to truly go home at Thanksgiving.

Home is not necessarily the place where we grew up or even our own house. In fact, it's not necessarily a place at all, but something more organic. Home is where we connect with others, feel love, warmth, unconditional acceptance, even if for just a few short hours or the duration of a meal. It is the smell of the Thanksgiving dinner cooking, a table set beautifully and with love, even if just with a centerpiece made of pine cones from the back yard. It is the hope and promise that everything will be okay - even if it's not.

As a reporter, I treasure my job covering homes, because it allows me the privilege of entering the homes and lives of others: rich, poor, traditional, funky and just plain regular. With every home comes the realization that no matter how different we are, we all share this emotional need for a place to feel cared about, a place to call home.

The magazines and morning news shows are filled with stories of how to create this feeling of home at Thanksgiving. We can't get enough advice on how to set a lovely Thanksgiving table, cook a delicious meal and entertain with finesse. The other day I picked up the November issue of Better Homes and Gardens to read the Thanksgiving recipes and tips on how to cook a perfect turkey - and I'm not even cooking.

But the taste of those long ago Chicago Thanksgiving dinners, always an amazing cornucopia of roast turkey, stuffing and cranberry-orange salad, accompanied by mountains of sweet potatoes slathered with crisped marshmallows, have never been matched in my memory.

I will always think back to that time, knowing that everything is precious, finite and maybe just for this moment.

Oliver Goldsmith once said, "Wherever I roam, whatever realms to see, my heart untraveled, fondly turns to thee."

So here's to remembering and going home for Thanksgiving. It's the place we most long for and always manage to find - wherever life's journey takes us.

[Last modified November 17, 2005, 08:15:09]