Thanksgiving at my Grandma's. My father had a large family. Three brothers and two sisters. Every one of them would gather together for the holiday at Grandma K's house. With all their wives and husbands and children. Now that's how to celebrate Thanksgiving. With lots of relatives you hardly ever see all year long and plenty of cousins to get to know and establish a pecking order with again.

My brother, sister, dad, and I were living at my grandma's this particular year that stands out in my mind. I probably remember this so vividly because it was the first year that I wasn't having Thanksgiving with my mother for the first time in my young six years of life. Dad had moved out on her, took us kids with him, changed the locks on the door of the little house we all shared, locked the dog in, and moved us to Grandma's. When my mom came home from work at 11:15, she couldn't get in. I don't know what she actually did from there but I can just imagine the devastation and heartache she felt. Where to stay for the night, for the rest of her life actually. What to do next. How could he take the kids???!!! We were just as heartbroken.

A month and a half later we were celebrating Thanksgiving with Grandma and her offspring and her offspring's offsprings. Just like usual. Except I remember feeling disassociated from the whole gala. I felt like I was brushing the edges of all my relative's lives and not being absorbed into them. Grandpa K had died a few years earlier so he wasn't there anymore.

A few aunts and uncles had their own personal tragedies going on. Aunt Guinevere was dying from cancer, I'm not sure which type. I really didn't grasp what was wrong with her since I was so young but she looked tired, very tired, and she reposed on the living room couch most the time. The next Thanksgiving Aunt Guinevere wasn't with us but the rest of the Brown family was. They looked and felt disjointed. The Brown cousins--Bruce, Barbara, and Brent--acted shy and reticent and looked like they were bursting with something to tell but they didn't know what to tell because sadness got in the way. Uncle Brown (I forget his first name) sat at the piano and played like he always did every year but his heart wasn't in it. He seemed to be passing time until the moment he felt released from the duty and obligation of coming to the family gathering one more year. Actually, he looked like that every year. I don't remember the Browns coming to any other Thanksgiving gatherings after that.

I thought that Aunt Ginny (short for Virginia) had her own personal tragedy going on although she definitely didn't think so. I hated Uncle Berle. He was red-cheeked and rough. Every year when he greeted me and I had to give the mandatory hug, he pinched me hard on the bum. It hurt and I yowled. Uncle Berle laughed every time. And I glowered at him every time then avoided him the rest of the day. He did that, too, when we'd go visit them. They didn't have any children and I felt grateful no kid of theirs had to have him as a father. When he died years later, all I could think of was that another lecherous man had finally gotten his due.

But then again, I would have been grateful not to have had my dad as a father, too. My father loved me but I never felt it. I have one picture of me being held in his arms and I'm giving him a big hug. I have no recall of this. My recall is that I was never hugged or held by him. I do remember distinctly the time I had to have a tooth pulled and I was scared to death it would hurt. He tried various ideas that didn't work. And then he did the tried and true tooth-on-a-string-tied-to-a-doorknob trick reassuring me several times that he wasn't going to slam the door unless I wanted him to. He slammed the door anyway. The tooth did come out but my trust in him was lessened even more. I guess that's what dads in that day were used to doing. But were they also used to using their kids as a weapon to hurt their wives, or rather soon-to-be ex-wives?

Uncle George was the oldest and the fattest. He was married to Velma and they had three girls, all pudgy. Darned if I can remember all their names now. I know there was Carol and Regina but can't remember the other one. We rarely visited with them. They used to live in a farmhouse near Bucyrus, Ohio. I liked when we visited with them there. It was more interesting than visiting the aunts and uncles in the city where I had to hang around the house and try to find something to pass the time without touching any of their stuff. Especially at Aunt Ginny's house. My dad and Aunt Ginny had a falling out so we didn't have to go visit them much after that. Uncle George and Aunt Velma didn't have animals, except for a few cats who fascinated me since we didn't have any, or a barn or fields to explore but the house was old and intrigued me. They had a Stereopticon that would amuse me for hours. Well, it seemed like hours. Uncle George wasn't my father's favorite brother.

Uncle Ronnie was. I think the birth order was George, Ronnie, my dad, and then Uncle Al, who was the last born. Aunt Ginny and Guinevere were in there somewhere. Sometimes it bothers me not knowing all the details of my immediate relatives like this but the aunts and uncles weren't really close with each other. Except for my dad and Uncle Ronnie. I liked Uncle Ronnie, too. He always said hi to me and made me feel welcome. I loved his wife, Thelma, too. There wasn't a whole lot of interaction that went on but I felt comfortable visiting them. Uncle Ronnie was into model railroading. He had miles of train tracks all around his whole basement. I didn't particularly like their only son, Greg, my cousin. But I was closer to him than I was with any of my other cousins. Probably because I saw him more often. Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Thelma had had a baby girl first but she died. I knew this much but I never knew the circumstances.

When some of the family took a trip to the family cemetery to see Grandpa Kellenberger's grave several years after he died, I got to see a whole lot of other gravestones with family names on them I had heard about. Then I came across Baby Kellenberger, born to Roland and Thelma Kellenberger. I was so touched that I took a flower from Grandpa's bouquet that had been brought and placed one flower on the baby's grave. Aunt Thelma saw what I was doing and said, "Look at that" quietly to her husband. Another relative said, "I wonder why she's doing that?" but no one answered. I saw a look of sadness and appreciation on her face. Aunt Thelma died years later. From cancer, I believe.

Lastly, there was Uncle Al. From what I have gathered now, I believe he had a drinking problem. It was never said but I knew he was considered the black sheep of the family. I hooked into sadness and tragedy easy so I always felt for him but I didn't get to know him well since we didn't visit him much. His first wife, Doris, died. From what, I don't know. He had one child by her. For some reason, I have very little memory of her. I think she was ten years older than me so we didn't sit at the same tables. Uncle Al remarried to a very nice woman named Mary. She was someone who I thought was a pretty cool person, but, for some reason, she was "talked" about in the family as a no-gooder. She was never fully accepted as a member and I always felt sorry for her. They had a daughter together. He died in his late 40's. It seems to me that I found some public records online about Uncle Al and that he had liver disease.

So, this was the family gathering that came together at Thanksgiving at Grandma K's house each year until she had a stroke when I was 10-years-old. The dining room was huge and the table, with it's extension leaves added, filled the room to its fullest. Somehow, a card table or two were squeezed over by the window so the kids could sit at the traditional "children's table." Which is where I always was. Funny, I only remember sitting with Brent, Greg, my brother, and maybe my sister. It had to be more because the big table would only hold all those aunts, uncles, and their spouses plus Grandma.

There was a lot of clanking and talking. My dad even taped it one year on a cassette recorder. All you could hear was the clanking and the murmur of talking. Everything was passed hand-to-hand around the table, including the kid's table. Having to see those pickled eggs come around made me nearly throw up but the rest of the stuff...yum, yum, absolutely wonderful. The kids finished early and the adults lingered for more conversation.

For us kids, we knew it was time for the traditional hide-and-seek game. We could venture into the forbidden parts of the house while the adults were preoccupied with talking. Mostly, we hid upstairs. Grandma's room was off limits but, well, you know me, that is where I would hide. Her room was always strewn about with clothes. She had so many clothes for an old woman, I thought. One time Grandma came upstairs unexpectedly and I had to scoot out from under the bed into what was still referred to as Uncle George's room. That was exciting. I heard her yelling, "You kids know you're not supposed to be in my room" as I scuttled away without being caught.

Uncle George's room didn't have a door that led to the hallway. You could only get to that room though Grandma's room or through the middle bedroom, which was the room that my sister and I were sharing while we lived with Grandma. I always thought that was very strange. To have to come into someone else's room to get to your own room. Sometimes in the middle of the night we would be awakened by Uncle George coming in late and going to his room to sleep. What was strange was that I never saw him leave in the morning. I guess I was at school or something.

Eventually, some of the adults would tire of sitting at the table and would drift out to the living room. Some to turn on the TV. Uncle Brown to always start playing the piano. It would be the men in the living room and the women in the kitchen cleaning up and putting food away. Always. My mom would do the dishes when she used to be allowed to be there. I missed her that year. I wondered if she was having a good Thanksgiving. I didn't know since we weren't allowed to call her on the phone.

Finally, everyone would leave and I would be able to take off the starchy dress I had been wearing. We'd sit down and watch some TV, then it was off to bed. How a house could hold so many people and be so noisy then in such a short time get so quiet was amazing. Thanksgiving was the big family draw, not Christmas. I think that was all that Grandma could handle.

Oh, yeh, Happy Birthday to my oldest son Grant.