By Mark Turner
Our extended family has been getting together at Thanksgiving and Christmas as long as I can remember. Over the years, the players have changed. Kids grow up, get married and begin families of their own. Grandparents pass away. Aunts, uncles, and cousins move to other states or come back home. The constant is that we’re family and we celebrate these major holidays together. Everyone celebrates differently, but I’d wager that more important than the turkey, the football or the presents is the time you spend together. Family connections matter.
I grew up an only child, but my mom was the oldest of eight children. Many of my aunts and uncles lived in the same state, so we’d make the drive to visit them regularly. My granddad died when I was three so I don’t remember him, but my grandmama lived just 30 miles away and we visited her nearly every week. My grandmother and granddaddy were 40 miles in the other direction, along with Uncle Ferd and Aunt Anna Mary. That’s where we often gathered for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners when I was a kid.
Talk around the dining room table often included stories about other family members, both living and dead. History and family relationships were important. Both of my parents did major genealogy research, in the days when you actually had to go to the courthouse to review records in musty books pulled from a high shelf in a back room.
Every now and then someone would pull out a photo album, filled mostly with snapshots from family gatherings. There were a few professional portraits, but mostly these were pictures much like we make today with our camera phones. The older folks could remember some of those memorialized occasions, events like great grandma’s 96th birthday or family reunions on the farm. We youngsters tried to make the connection between our ancestors and our parents and cousins.
After Natalie and I married, we spent most Thanksgivings with her parents and siblings. We all moved to the west coast, her folks to Ashland, Oregon and we to Bellingham. Some years the gathering was at our home and others we made the 10-hour drive down I-5 to Ashland. One year we were expecting everyone at our house, but ended up packing the turkey and driving south after Natalie’s over 80 year old father fell off a ladder picking persimmons, bonked his head and ended up in the hospital.
Now that Natalie’s mother is a widow and has moved to Bellingham, we still gather at her house for Thanksgiving with as many relatives as we can muster. There won’t be as many of us this year; small children and the impending birth of another great-grandchild will keep some grandchildren at home. We’ll share photos, memories and stories while we feast, relax, and enjoy each other’s company.
The next day, I go back to work. As a family portrait photographer I have two families that have scheduled their family portraits while everyone is home for Thanksgiving. I can’t think of a better way to spend a work day than helping other families capture their own memories, which they’ll share for years to come.
