On Thanksgiving Games (Or, Not your typical Thanksgiving post, I promise)

Are you familiar with Thanksgiving Day music? Did you even know there were Thanksgiving tunes? Neither did I, but two days ago, a simple game meant to occupy the kids turned our family Thanksgiving into a local musical.

It all started when I felt pity for my two kids for not having cousins to share the family holidays with. I was fortunate enough to grow up with a table full of 'em and so loved all family gatherings. But since my own kids aren't as lucky, they don't enjoy the family dinners like I did, and that makes me sad. So in planning for this year's T-giving dinner at my mother's house, where 13 adults would grace the table with my two children, ages 12 and 9, I decided my kids needed jobs.

I created two questionnaires - one for my rock-musician son, and the other for my silly goofball of a daughter. His question was: Who was your favorite singer or rock group when you were a kid? Her question was: What was the craziest thing you did as a kid or teenager? I then provided the name of every adult in attendance and a space for the kids to fill in the answers. They conducted their interviews during cocktail hour so that during dinner - once the can't-talk-eating silence set it - we'd make a guessing game out of it.

My son began by asking everyone to guess whose favorite group was The Platters. A poor poker face on my father's part revealed him, and when my cousin chose him, Dad broke into song - a tune I could not place, not so much out of lack of familiarity and more out of inability to identify any tune whatsoever. (This from the same man who insists on singing Happy Birthday to me every year over the phone...it's painful, I tell you.)

Next came Dion and the Belmonts. Once Mom was guessed...yep, you got it...she broke into a rendition of Run-around Sue which, at least, was better than Dad's singing. At this point, my son was losing it. He wanted to get through the list. I reminded him that this was the purpose of the game - to get everyone talking, laughing, and discussing something other than politics (which never goes over well in this bi-partisan family).

I won't go through all 13 musical selections, but I will mention my step-father's choice, John Philip Sousa. (What????) With this, everyone broke into Be kind to your web-footed friend, for a duck may be somebody's uncle... Oy vey! But when it was my turn and I was identified as the lover of Styx, I couldn't help myself. Tonight's the night we'll make history, honey, you and I, and I'll take any risk to tie back the hands of time and stay with you here tonight. Yeah, baby, the Best of Times.

Finally, it was my daughter's turn to have everyone guess who had committed what crazy act in their youth. I learned many wonderful things about my family and friends that night, thankfully in rated G version since most of us knew these answers would be shared. Not my cousin Don, though, whose answer was "got married". His wife was there, and later when we went around the table and said what we were thankful for, she said, "I'm thankful I've got a sense of humor." Good woman, my cousin Judy!

Other gems included shooting out street lights with a BB gun, climbing a hotel tower and dropping water balloons on people below until chased away by police, trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by trying to drink the most water (failed), sneaking into the University of Miami pool at night and jumping off the high dive naked, and cutting off a sibling's long hair while she slept (my personal favorite).

This game lasted the entire dinner as we talked, stared at each other in surprise, and laughed loudly. It was brilliant. And the kids could not once complain of being bored...the greatest part of it all. Everyone enjoyed it so much that I think it will become a family tradition. I've already got question ideas brewing for next year.

What say you? Any fun Thanksgiving traditions you'd like to share?

On Childhood Homes (Or, Say What You Need to Say)

The window was too high, so I climbed onto the air conditioning compressor next to the abandoned house. I felt adventurous, though it doesn’t take much at middle-age.

When I peered in the window, I knew I would find the kitchen.

What I didn’t know was how suddenly my insides would tighten and then spring loose, sending a knot of pressure into my throat that took my breath away.

The abandoned house was my house, the one I had grown up in but was forced to leave in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew ripped it apart. I had heard it had since been put back together and occupied by two different owners. Now it was deserted, a torn “Final Eviction” notice still taped to the front door.

Nostalgia is a strong and confusing feeling, even more potent than joy, I believe, and certainly more complex. As I walked around the outside of the house, cursing whoever was responsible for the sunburned grass cracking beneath my sneakers, I peered into all the windows. I felt sad. And angry. My house was so exposed, so naked, so vulnerable. And so dead. I found it hard to believe that anyone had ever lived there, even me.

It was a long time ago that I left that house. It had actually been my parents who stayed there until 1992. That house had stopped being my base years earlier, when I had moved into my own apartment in an attempt to be an adult. But even when the house was not my base, it had always been my anchor.

I peered into my bedroom window, which faced the front of the house, and then turned to look at the white convertible whose engine purred softly in the driveway. It belonged to my childhood friend, Jennifer, whom I had come to visit that day, for the first time in a very long time. Too long.

I had heard the house was “on the market”, though buyers seemed not to be chomping at the bit to pick it up, and Jennifer suggested we drive by to see what I could see. And oh, what I could see.

I saw my purple bedroom walls decorated with a Richard Gere poster alongside my horse paraphernalia. Now those walls were white.

I saw the apple green carpet littered with album covers (Styx’s Paradise Theater, REO Speedwagon’s High Infidelity, Journey’s Escape) as Jennifer and I decided which music to rock to on our sleepover. Now the floor was tiled in beige marble.

I saw my banana-yellow, rotary-style telephone, the one on which I spent countless hours chatting with Jennifer, my other girlfriends, and some of the adolescent loves of my life, all now grown with children who would never know what to do with a rotating phone dial.

As Jennifer sat patiently in her car, the sun beating down on her long wavy hair, she suddenly looked like the sixteen-year-old version of herself instead of the forty-three-year-old mother of teenagers. I realized how much I missed her. I didn’t miss the past. Lord knows – and so does Jennifer – that it wasn’t always pretty. I didn’t even miss that old house so much. I simply missed my friend.

I didn’t say much as I climbed back into the car and allowed Jennifer to take me away from that house, driving me down my street, away from my past. She turned on the radio to a classic rock station, and the song just starting to play was Feels Like the First Time by Foreigner. (I am not making this up; it’s too corny for that.) It was the first rock concert Jennifer and I ever attended, in the now demolished Miami Orange Bowl.

That is when I cried. For what felt like many minutes but was probably less than one, I sobbed for times lost and, more importantly, for missing friendship. Jennifer, to her credit, said nothing while I bawled.

Finally composing myself, I announced very matter-of-factly that she and I had to see each other more often. Jennifer agreed. I then told her that I missed her.

She let out an “Aw”, so obviously trying to hide her own tears that were swiftly being blown away by the summer breeze. “I miss you, too.” Which made me think of a present-day song by John Mayer, who sings that you should say what you need to say.

I’m glad that I did.