Category Archives: Reflections

Apollo at 50

July 20, 1969. I was two months shy of my fifteenth birthday and the warm afternoon sun was coming through the dining room window as I set the table for Sunday dinner in a house that no longer exists. The television had been on most of the day as the world and I waited for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to land on the moon.

Almost seven years previously, John F. Kennedy had urged the United States to commit to sending astronauts to the moon and back. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things,not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” The Soviet Union had launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957 and the first man into space just four years later. At the time most of us did not realize Kennedy’s lofty goal was less about establishing a long-term presence in space but more about beating our mortal enemy, those godless Commies.

Back then we saw science and technology as tools for creating a much better world. Education and knowledge were respected, not dismissed as a liberal conspiracy to undermine our sacred way of life. So, the country rallied around the President and the space program. It seemed our civic duty to follow each mission from launch to splashdown. The three (and only) major networks provided nonstop television coverage of each mission. Some schools brought TV sets into classrooms.

On February 2, 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth in his Mercury capsule, Friendship 7. Alan Shepard’s and Gus Grissom’s fifteen minute suborbital flights seemed less important; Glenn became a national hero and the one we all remembered. Kennedy’s issued his famous challenge on September 12, 1962.

In January 1963, my grandparents sent me a cardboard Mercury capsule, complete with a helmet and a battery operated control panel with blinking lights and dials that whizzed around for a few days before breaking down. Still, it was thrilling to pretend I was an astronaut.

The Gemini program’s first manned launch was in March 1965 almost two years after the last Mercury mission. I watched Frank McGee and David Brinkley, their calm, comforting voices, covering the Gemini missions for NBC, “sponsored by Gulf Oil Corporation.” (Click here for the NBC Special Reports open and close, which preceded any major announcement, from space shots to LBJ’s health status.) Brinkley’s droll delivery reminds me of Obama, especially in this clip, (at 1:30), when he remarks, “It seems to me, um, the age of the computer had to arrive before the age of space, didn’t it?” (I’ve found the networks’ breathless coverage of the 50^th anniversary rather irritating.)

Among my few memories of Gemini are building Revell’s plastic model and watching SPECTRE’s bad guys capture a Gemini capsule in orbit at the beginning of the fifth Bond film, You Only Live Twice. Ed White stepped outside of Gemini 4 on June 3, 1965, becoming the first astronaut to walk in space, another milestone. But I think interest started to dwindle over the next year, as we became concerned with the turmoil on earth. The war in Vietnam was ramping up. Newark, Detroit, Minneapolis and other cities would explode in rage and fire in July 1967. The world I’d known was disappearing. Or maybe it had always been this way and I’d been oblivious.

On January 27, 1967 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died gruesome deaths after a spark from faulty wiring ignited the pure oxygen environment in the Apollo 1 command module during pre-flight testing. We heard about it the next evening when Jules Bergman, ABC News’ Science Editor, somberly read a script from the ABC News desk. There were no 24-hour news channels back then; no instantaneous and continuous coverage. It happened, it was over, and we went back to our lives. (Nineteen years and a day later the space shuttle Challenger exploding 73 seconds after liftoff; we watched the disaster on an endless loop.)

I didn’t follow any of the Apollo missions during the next two and a half years, having descended into the depths of teenaged angst and cynicism. Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve broadcast from lunar orbit seemed quaint and hollow after I’d watched Chicago cops beating protestors and CBS news teams during the 1968 Democratic Convention.

But then came Apollo 11 and the moon landing.

Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969 and, after making one and a half trips around the earth, the third stage ignited, sending the modules and the astronauts towards the moon. The CSM separated from the third stage, turned around and extracted the LM. All this happened within a few hours. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin entered the LM on July 18 for preliminary checks during the three-day trip to the moon; the craft entered into lunar orbit on July 19. (Vox has an excellent summary of the mission here.)

And we waited.

On July 20, 1969 the LM Eagle undocked and separated from the CSM Columbia at 12:44pm CDT. The two would stay in orbit together until Eagle entered its descent orbit at 2:08pm CDT. The descent engine fired at 3:05pm CDT and Eagle began the nail-biting final trip down to the moon’s surface. Hundreds of millions of us were now glued to their television screens. (You can watch a long version, 19m 52s, of the final approach here. If you want the Cliff Notes version, 4m 30s, click here.)

I remember watching the black and white pictures on our console TV. As Eagle neared the surface a long probe, looking like a needle about to pierce the skin, appeared at the top of the screen, growing larger until the module’s shadow blotted out most of the view. At 3:17pm, Neil Armstrong uttered the first of two famous phrases, “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”

Neil Armstrong finally stepped onto the moon’s surface six hours later, delivering those unforgettable words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The video quality wasn’t the best, but coming from 250,000 miles, it was awe-inspiring and humbling. The world was one for a brief time.

AFTERWORD

Jethro Tull’s album, Benefit, hit U.S. shelves in May, 1970. I’d been listening to it for forty-some years before actually reading the lyrics to “For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me.” The verses rival Steely Dan in ambiguous, but chorus is Michael Collins, the man who stayed in the CSM, telling Armstrong and Aldrin to be careful and lamenting he couldn’t be with them

“…I’m with you L.E.M.
Though it’s a shame that it had to be you
The mother ship
Is just a blip from your trip made for two
I’m with you boys
So please employ just a little extra care
It’s on my mind
I’m left behind when I should have been there
Walking with you…”

So, have a listen before you go.

Apollo image (c) Can Stock Photo / merlin74

Field Report

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I’ve been on the new job for more than three months now and it’s been a delight. I don’t regret walking away from the chaos into which my profession has descended. I don’t have to deal with ill-tempered administrators expecting the impossible. My visits aren’t rushed and there are no productivity targets.

And I have a lot of stories to tell.

Dead Men Walking
I’m astounded by how willing men are to put their lives and balls in jeopardy by lying like a cheap rug in front of their wives. I’ll ask the husband a question about health status he’ll say, “Of course, I’m fine!” She will roll her eyes, snort or say, “You didn’t tell him about this!”

I’ll ask men, “Are you under any stress right now?” They will shoot furtive glances at their spouses, sitting a mere few feet away, and snicker. I’ll shake my head and mutter, “Don’t poke the bear,” while thinking you’re living on the edge, fool.

Another question on the list is: “Are you short of breath at night when you’re in bed?” An eighty-one year old guy chuckled and said, “It depends on what I’m doing.” His wife narrowed her eyes and said, “Don’t go there.” You want to sleep on the couch?

There’s a memory test near the end of the evaluation. I give members three words to remember before asking them to draw a clock face and hands to indicate a random time. I then ask if they can recall any of the words.

One woman got two out of three. Her husband, two rooms over, and in a wheelchair, blurted out all three words.

She yelled, “You shut the f*ck up!”

I thought, she’s going to beat his ass as soon as I leave. It’s best if I’m not around when the cops find the body.

And That’s When the Fight Started
I evaluated an octogenarian Hispanic couple with the aid of a translating service I call on my cell phone. It’s not as efficient as an in-person interpreter; often one side doesn’t hear the questions or answers. I make sure I look at the person directly rather than telling the translator, “Would you ask him/her…?” It’s far more polite and lets them know I recognize them as individuals rather than anonymous subjects.

Her answers were short with few explanations. Her husband, however, responded to every question with a dissertation before getting to “yes” or “no.” It went well until the end when I foolishly asked, “¿Tiene preguntas?” – “Do you have any questions?”

She began a tirade in Spanish to which her husband responded just as vociferously. The interpreter waited a few minutes before translating the argument.

“She says her husband is always tired because he watches the television too much and then can’t sleep, and isn’t that bad for him? He wants to know what is wrong with watching TV because he enjoys it.’”

Their son, who’d been sitting at the table during the entire interview, just snickered.

I said, “I’m not getting involved in this; thanks for your help” and hung up. The couple and their son paused to bid me adieu before resuming their, uh, discussion.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I saw a woman in her mid-70s one afternoon. I had time to see her two hours earlier, but she didn’t want me to because “I have to finish doing my nails.” When I arrived at the appointed time, her husband greeted me when I arrived and graciously offered me a seat at their dining room table. A red-headed ball of fire who reminded me of Gladys Kravitz joined us a few minutes later, snapping at her husband, who appeared to be the perfect Abner. “Where’s my insurance card? It was here on the table! Go find it!”

She had a badly infected toe, purple and swollen. She’d also had both hips and knees replaced, running the risk of infecting the bone around the replacements. When I pointed it out, she said, “I don’t want to go on antibiotics because they give me diarrhea. And I don’t want to go to the hospital to get IV antibiotics. Can’t they do it here at home?”

“Well, it looks pretty bad to me. If you don’t get it treated, you’re likely need it amputated.”

She scowled at me.

Being a conscientious sort, I called her primary care physician and relayed my concerns. She said she would call Gladys and prescribe antibiotics for the infection.

The woman called me the next morning on my way to another evaluation. “This is Gladys Kravitz. Are you the doctor that snitched to my primary care doctor?”

“Yes, I did. Yer gonna lose that toe if you don’t listen to your doctor.”

“I told you I don’t want to take any antibiotics.”

Well, one can only go so far…

Curiosities
Halfway between Harlem Road and Ridgeland Avenue, on US 30, the Google Map lady says, “Welcome to Indiana.” A hundred yards or so farther down, she says, “Welcome to Illinois.” Indiana is a good fifteen miles to the east as the crow flies. A wormhole, maybe?

A hypertensive, obese Pakistani man spent much of the evaluation extolling the virtues of natural medicine, telling me how things like turmeric and lime would cure my own hypertension and obesity.

Only the Good Die Young
She was an adorable 88-year-old with a charming smile and a voice like Georgia Engel. She was legally blind and used a walker. And, like the Little Old Lady From Pasadena, she could be a terror.

I met her with her daughter and one of two caregivers who always stayed with her. I introduced myself and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Are you going to give me my driver’s license back?”

Her daughter said, “We had to take it away because she’s now legally blind and it’s not safe for her to drive.”

“Well, no, I can’t give you your license back.”

“Then what good are you?”

I continued with the usual questions.

“Have you had a heart attack?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you had a stroke?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you had any kind of cancer?”

“Not yet.”

“You sound like you’re looking forward to it.”

Before I left, I said, “Well, you are doing pretty well for 88.”

Her caregiver replied, “She can still give you the finger,” which prompted her to flip us off with both hands.

Tea and Sympathy

It’s not all fun and games. Sometimes I act as bartender or father confessor, listening to sorrows, regrets and frustrations.

A man from Pakistan brought his extended family to the U.S., along with their bitter familial feud. When I asked if he had any regrets during the depression evaluation, he said sadly, “I’ve begged my family to forgive me for bringing them here, but they refuse. Some of them won’t talk to me.”

A woman’s worsening arthritis left her unable to walk more than a few feet without agonizing pain. When her adorable, diminutive Shih-Tzu wanted a potty break, I let her out (and had to coax her back in because she wanted to play). We continued the evaluation, but she started to cry.

“Look at me! I can barely move. I used to go out all the time and now I can’t. I’m in so much pain all the time and there isn’t much they can do.”

A man only a few years older than me had lost his wife one month earlier after a short but horrible illness. He sat next to me on the couch, his late wife’s two Shih-Tzu puppies by his side, wagging their tails as they looked me over. He looked like a biker, big and burly, but he was completely lost without her.

“I have to get the house ready to sell, but I don’t have the energy.” His voice trailed off and he looked as if he could cry.

Early in my career I learned I couldn’t fix all the ills of my patients. Often, just listening without judgement or reproach is sufficient therapy.

Midwest Seasons

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We have a saying here: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” Midwestern seasons can be unpredictable, ranging from tranquil to brutal. Here’s my guide.

Winter

Midwestern winters…SUCK. There’s no other way to put it. It’s not the cold; it’s the unending grey that stretches from early November through March and sometimes beyond. We start the long, slow crawl to more sunlight on December 22, but the darkness just sucks the life out of everything. Christmas is bittersweet; the day after Christmas is the hangover from the night before. New Year’s Eve is the last hurrah of the year. I still hate trying to stay up past midnight, watching one of the local newscasters trying to slip her co-anchor the tongue as “Sweet Home Chicago” plays during the fireworks at Navy Pier.

I keep telling myself, “I just have to make it through January and February.” The Superbowl means spring is about six weeks away, if we’re lucky.

Spring
Just when I think about hanging myself rather than enduring one more week of winter, the sun suddenly comes out and spring arrives, right on schedule! The trees seem to go from delicate buds to full bloom overnight and the grass is once again green. The pungent scent of fresh (not frozen) dog turds wafts through the air on our morning walk. Praise the Lord and pass the potting soil! It’s time to take the covers off the patio furniture and the air conditioner, hook up the garden hose, and think about how I’m definitely going to power wash the deck this year along with all those other warm weather tasks. I’ll be lucky to check a quarter of them off the list. Life is good again, eh?

Not so fast. This is the Midwest, remember. March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. But Mother Nature is a bitch; it’s more likely Scar and his friends will show up for the next couple of months and remind us we are idiots for maintaining any sense of optimism. The Cubs postponed their 2018 Opening Day game because of snow, while the White Sox, a much hardier bunch, played and beat Kansas City 14-7

We can go from turning on the furnace to turning on the AC in the same week, sometimes in the same day. We sat on the deck on St. Patrick’s Day in 2012 when the thermometer hit 81° and froze our butts off the following March. This year we got five inches of snow on Palm Sunday and 70° less than two days later, setting a record. Two more inches of snow fell on April 27. I’ve seen snow in Michigan on Mother’s Day and Peg had snow Memorial Day weekend when she was living in Minneapolis

Spring 2019 has been particularly brutal. The lousy weather has dragged on well into May with cooler than normal temperatures and endless rain and may continue into June. It was sunnier the last two weeks of March than all of April and May. The rain has jacked up mold levels, assaulting my lungs and adding to the misery.

There are momentary respites. The crabapple trees at the neighborhood park blossom for a few weeks. Lombard’s Lilacia Park lilac trees bloom sometime in May. Chicago kicks off the approaching summer when meteorologist and WGN’s Weather God Tom Skilling flips the switch on Buckingham Fountain.

Every year I tell myself, “Well, this winter wasn’t so bad.” And nine months later I’ll wish we were living someplace warm and cheap.

Summer

Our one week of spring gives way to summer. The urchins are out of school; Baxter no longer goes berserk at 7am when he hears the school bus. I wish the first day of summer was somewhere in July instead of June 21 when the Summer Solstice marks the beginning of that long, slow slide into darkness. But the change is gradual enough that it’s hard to notice, until mid-August when the sun sets before 8:20.

The weather can be hot and dry, hot and steamy or any combination. Those first few muggy days remind me of being out of school for the summer, listening to the mostly unintelligible words of the Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)” or the Beatles’ “Get Back” while riding around thinking about one of my classmates I just saw washing the family car. She wore shorts and those sleeveless blouses that through which one might glimpse the side of her bra.

We don’t have to suffer brutal heat like Phoenix where it’s so hot construction crews have to pour concrete after midnight. Chicago issues heat advisories when the heat and humidity become dangerous and the city opens cooling centers for the poor folk with no air conditioning, minimizing the risk of death. That approach developed after the devastating heat wave of July 1995, when triple-digit temperatures combined with an inadequate electrical grid resulted in more than 700 deaths, mostly among the elderly people who were isolated from the rest of their community. 215 died on July 15 alone. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office had to rent refrigerated trucks to store the surplus bodies.

Summer is mostly tolerable, except for the occasional deluge or tornado. July 1 means football pre-season starts in a month; college football in two. Baxter and I walk either early in the morning or late in the evening. Or we just say, “screw it” and go to Dairy Queen. (Last year we ran into an old guy in the DQ parking lot with a parrot on his arm and a cone in his hand, singing “Let’s all go to the lobby” on his way back to his truck.)

Autumn

This is easily my favorite time of year and it’s not just because I have an autumn birthday. What’s not to like? Labor Day signals summer’s official end. The kids go back to school and the adults put away that summer belligerence for another year. College football season starts, and I can look forward to another year of watching the Michigan State Spartans win instead of the Fighting Illini losing. Pro football starts as well, but it isn’t as exciting. Baseball will come to an end and the WGN 9 o’clock news won’t be postponed for a Cubs game.

There’s also nothing like the first time the wind shifts, and a Canadian high pressure system pushes the humidity back to the swamps in the South. The leaves start to turn (sometimes as soon as August) and eventually I’ll have to play “Find the Dog Turds” when Baxter decides to do it under the crabapple tree at the local park. Soon we’ll be knee-deep in pumpkin spice everything, from that overpriced coffee from Washington State to Culver’s Pumpkin Shakes.

The weather is fickle. We can go from crisp, sunny mornings to cold and drizzle. It snowed October 30, 1997, three months after I moved back to Illinois. It wasn’t much but enough to win a cynical bet I made with Peg. An EF4 tornado hit Washington, Illinois, on November 17, 2013. I’ve seen 70° two weeks before Christmas, followed by 15” of snow in January.

The cluster of holidays makes the early nightfall far easier to take. Halloween sits on the fence between Indian summer and the first snow. Thanksgiving is a great holiday because there’s a lot of food and no gifts to buy, at least until Black Friday kicks off the annual shopping frenzy. I start looking for stuff online before the Cyber Monday insanity and breath a sigh of relief when the last gift has been wrapped. The family once again ignores my suggestion to go on a Caribbean cruise for Christmas.

A new year begins. A new cycle begins.

Coming up: A report from the field.

Southwestern Christmas

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I grew up in Bisbee, Arizona, a small copper mining town nestled in the Mule Mountains ninety miles southeast of Tucson. The mine closed in the early 1970s; the town has been taken over by artsy hippie types and the Arizona Daily Star named Bisbee the state’s most gay-friendly town. A bumper sticker describes Bisbee as “Like Mayberry on Acid.”

The Bisbee area has several different regions which only becomes important when describing landmarks or certain homes. The part of Bisbee built around the canyon of the Mule Mountains is now “Old Bisbee,” and Warren is now officially Bisbee. Running southeast from Old Bisbee is the Lavender Pit mine and Lowell. A traffic circle (also called a roundabout) at the edge of Lowell splits the highway into three directions. The first right goes to Tintown, South Bisbee, Huachuca Terrace, Don Luis (pronounced “Louie) and the border town of Naco. The middle exit takes one to Bakerville and Warren/Bisbee, while the third one runs to Douglas, about 30 miles away. If you are insatiably curious, look up Bisbee on Google Maps.

I missed out on the delights that are common to Midwestern winters: below zero wind chills; four-foot snowdrifts in your yard; never seeing the sun for five months. I’d never heard of snowsuits, layering or thermal underwear since the temperature was often in the 50s or 60s. No one had a snow shovel or a snowblower, nor had we ever seen a snowplow. We didn’t have sleds or toboggans. I used to slide down a hillside on a piece of corrugated tin roofing in short sleeves and jeans. (One time I tried it without the tin and ripped the hell out of my pants, which didn’t make my mother happy).

Despite that we weren’t strangers to snow as Bisbee’s sits at 5,280 feet. In the mid-1960s we had more snow than my grandmother in Illinois. Bisbee saw eight inches of snow on New Year’s Eve, 2012 and another memorable snowfall on January 10, 2016. The combination of altitude, temperature and moisture content tended to make the snow a little heavier and wet, just right for snowballs. This is me, about 6 years old, pasting my mother with one.

Snow at lower desert elevations creates a surreal, fantastic landscape that has to be seen in person to appreciate. The prickly pear, mesquite and yucca shimmer as sunlight filters through a low ground fog. As the sun rises farther, the fog dissipates, and the snow begins to melt, often disappearing by noon. This shot is from outside of Phoenix in 2013.

We adhered to the traditional Christmas tree ritual. We’d buy a tree from a stand set up in a parking lot in Lowell, except for the time we cut our own. My stepfather would put the tree in the red and green metal stand with the prongs in the bottom that would eventually rust and break off, make sure it was as straight as could be expected, and tighten those big screws. My mother would untangle the lights, the kind with incandescent bulbs that doubled as night lights. Sometimes we had to go through the tedious process of checking each bulb since none of them would light up if one was burned out. I wanted to wrap the strings around horizontally, but Mom insisted on running them vertically. I didn’t think it mattered but I was overruled.

Then we’d drag out two boxes of Shiny Brite ornaments, untangle the wire ornament hangers and put them on the tree, knowing one or more would probably bite the dust each Christmas. After that, we’d hang those skinny silver strips we called icicles, but Midwesterners know as tinsel. (Trust me, Peg and I had a long discussion about the proper term. I still call them icicles!) I thought grabbing a handful and tossing them at the tree was efficient, but Mom disagreed:

“No, you have to put them on a few at a time. Otherwise, it looks sloppy.”

50 years later I still don’t have patience for detail work, so Peg puts the ornaments on the tree while I watch with rapt admiration. Just kidding. I usually haul the tree up from the basement and put it together; then, my work here is finished.

We’d pick one night to drive around town looking for outdoor Christmas lights, which had bigger bulbs and heavier wiring than the indoor ones. There were no inflatable cartoon characters, chasing light strings, or mechanical wire-framed deer, which one year my nephews rearranged into an obscene position. Few people had outdoor lights because they were an unnecessary expense for the average working stiff. Even fewer people had places to put them. There might be huge cottonwoods or scruffy Arizona oaks in someone’s yard; no one would deliberately plant evergreens as landscaping. I remember Mr. Ortega, who owned the shoe store in Lowell, had lights along the roof line and around the front door of his house in Don Luis.

A few new traditions began long after I left Arizona. Stringing lights around barrel cacti, saguaros or up the slender branches of ocotillo is a uniquely Southwestern tradition.

Ristras, wreaths or swags made of dried red chiles, hang on doors or porches instead of the traditional evergreen wreath on their doors.

Luminaria, lights lining pathways, go back at least 300 years when the Spanish created small lanterns on Christmas Eve to welcome baby Jesus into the world. Originally small piñon bonfires, they became votive candles set in brown paper lunch bags weighed down with a base of sand. Now the bags are plastic, the candles are electric, and people put them on rooftops and the cinder block walls surrounding many Southwestern homes, providing illumination throughout the Christmas season and often beyond.

I hope your Christmas was peaceful and your New Year will be hopeful.

Photo Credits
Featured Image
A square in Tlaquepaque Arts and Crafts Village, Sedona, Arizona
© Can Stock Photo / alexeys

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Of all the holidays, a few of which are aggravating, Thanksgiving is the best. There’s no frantic shopping for gifts and nothing to wrap. I don’t have to stay up until midnight for Christmas Eve Mass or to ring in the New Year. (It’s midnight in New York, so let’s just call it a day and go home, eh?) There’s no blazing heat, no mosquitos and I don’t have to worry about Baxter freaking out over firecrackers. The goals are getting together with family, stuffing ourselves, and waiting for the conversation to deteriorate into the absurd. Politics and religion are off limits; bodily functions and barely credible stories are expected.

Peg and I have developed a routine after 20 years together. I hate the last-minute scramble for staples, so I compiled a shopping list that starts in October and runs through December. We start with non-perishables and frozen stuff: canned pumpkin, evaporated milk and cream of mushroom soup; the oft-maligned cranberry jelly, the kind that comes with rings; gelatin for the Thanksgiving eggnog mold and Jell-O for the Christmas black cherry mold; canned and frozen green beans, frozen corn, deep dish pie shells and those French-fried onions. For those of you who missed it, Dorcas Reilly, the woman who invented green bean casserole died October 15, 2018 at the ripe old age of 92. Generations are forever in her debt.

Peg gets the perishables a week before the holiday, which includes cranberries, an orange, eggnog, onions, carrots, celery, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, biscuits in a can, and the turkey. I like flakey rolls and buttermilk biscuits for variety.

Peg’s sister Michele does the stuffing and the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever had. She used to do the rutabaga but it’s labor-intensive and Peg has more time now that she is, uh, “retired.” (We won’t talk about how a certain man of the cloth is a lying sack of shit.)

Thanksgiving is working out well this year. I’m working on Thursday while the nephews do dinner with their respective in-laws, so we’re celebrating on Friday. Peg has time to leisurely make pumpkin bread, bake and mash the sweet potatoes and make fresh cranberry relish, and I’m not underfoot. This year the turkey thawed out in record time, so we cooked it on Sunday and portioned it into freezer bags for people to take home. That’s a lot easier than doing it after an exhausting day of cooking and cleaning.

Thanksgiving morning follows a familiar pattern. I get up, make a batch of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls in a can and turn on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. That is until last year when it became a non-stop ad for NBC programming and stars. So this year we’re going to record WGN’s coverage of “Chicago’s Grand Holiday Tradition,” the Uncle Dan’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, sponsored in the past by Marshall Fields, Brach’s Confections, McDonald’s and Target.

Peg starts to harangue me about getting the turkey into the oven around 11:30 or so. “It’s not going to be done on time and I’m going to be really pissed!”

“How many years have I done this and how many times has it not been ready? Several and never.”

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

There’s still a lot to do, like prep the green bean casserole which goes into the oven as soon as the turkey comes out. We’ll haul out the plates and silverware, get out the champagne glasses and good napkins, and make sure the Finicky One (you know who you are!) has several forks so as not to cross-contaminate her food. Just before everyone starts to arrive, Peg makes a holiday punch with cranberry and pomegranate juice, frozen raspberries and something fizzy, which everyone is free to enjoy with or without alcohol.

The family arrives at our house mid-afternoon and gathers around the kitchen for punch and snacks. It’s all fun and games until the turkey comes out of the oven. Peg gets testy and everyone has learned: get out of the kitchen and no one gets hurt. Not that I’m a paragon of patience. I once chased my ex-mother-in-law out of the kitchen with a meat cleaver.

The casserole goes into the oven while the turkey rests, like it has nothing better to do while we work. I start filling cookie sheets with rolls while Peg makes gravy. We’re fine as long as I stay out of the way. Casserole out, rolls in for 15 minutes and we’re done.

Food goes to the table and everyone sits down. We say the traditional Catholic grace, the words to which I still haven’t learned. “Bless us O Lord…” mumble “…these gifts…” mumble “…thy bounty…” mumble “…In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (or is it Spirit?) Amen.”

Then we start passing food around the table.

“No, clockwise! You’re messing up the flow!”

“Guys, don’t start eating just because you filled your plate! Keep passing.”

“Where’s the butter?”

“It’s right in front of you!”

“Can you pass Dave another roll? No, don’t you DARE throw it!” *Challenge accepted*

“Do NOT let that champagne cork go flying!” (Moi?)

Then we go around the table telling everyone what we are thankful for, though the guys’ priority is food. In the past there’s been an awkward silence, but Bob now volunteers to go first, having grown up and learned the importance of tradition. There are variations on the theme of family, spouses and gainful employment. We’ll toast the memories of Peg and Michele’s mother and father, Gloria and Mike.

Michele’s daughters-in-law are wonderful young women and the girls she never had. A few years back she talked about how thankful she was for them and started crying. We were all sitting there reverently until her son Christopher started giggling. He might have been nervous over the show of genuine affection. Or maybe he was just being a dick. Well, that killed the Hallmark moment. I started snickering, and the rest of table erupted.

“Nice going, Chris!” more giggling

Table talk is predictable. The women will chat about whatever while the guys stuff their faces and look at the clock, anticipating the next football game. Sometimes Chris will launch into a long-winded tale with just a hint of truth embedded somewhere. Smart phones are off limits until after we’ve eaten.

Dinner ends and most of us help clear the table (again, you know who you are!). Leftovers go into storage bags, then out on the deck to cool. Peg begins her cleanup and we all stay clear. “I have a system for doing this and you’re just getting in the way. If you want to be helpful, go sit down!” Needing no further encouragement, the menfolk head for the couch to watch part of the game before becoming comatose. The women sit around the table and talk. Baxter and I have had enough togetherness for awhile and retreat upstairs for a short nap.

The years have provided us with memories of holiday dinners past, some more endearing than others:

I played Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song” in the middle of dinner and we re-enacted the dinner scene from Beetlejuice.
A much younger Bob laughed so hard he puked into his plate, ending Thanksgiving dinner.
I forgot to put sugar into the pumpkin pie mix. I couldn’t understand why the pies were greyish brown instead of that deep golden color. I took a bite and said, “It’s not so bad.” Everyone else called bullshit and remind me of it every year.
I flambéd the eggnog mold with Bacardi 151. (“Oh my God, you’re going to burn the house down!”)

So, enjoy the holiday. Be thankful for what you have. Cherish the moments with family because they won’t be around forever.

And skip Black Friday. No deal is THAT good.

Notes from Dr. Dave

Musings from forty plus years as an OB/GYN and a writer.

Category Archives: Reflections

Apollo at 50

Field Report

Midwest Seasons

Southwestern Christmas

Happy Thanksgiving!