The Memorable Thanksgiving

I don't have any particular memories of Thanksgiving until one year when my family did something completely unexpected. For reasons that I didn't understand then, and don't remember now, we decided to go to Piccadilly Cafeteria for Thanksgiving instead of doing something traditional.

I thought it would be really cool to go to a restaurant on Thanksgiving, and looked forward to it. Since I was just a kid, I didn't realize that I would feel the loss of seeing my parents carve the turkey, and couldn't imagine that I would really miss seeing that nasty cranberry sauce on the table; but I did. I enjoyed eating at the restaurant, of course. Piccadilly is one of those places where you go through the line and get what you want. Who doesn't like getting exactly what they want?

I didn't realize until then that Thanksgiving isn't about getting exactly what you want. It's about family, about community, and about gratitude for shared blessings. You can't really understand Thanksgiving if you get exactly what you want because it is all about being part of a the blessings that come from and are shared by a larger community. To this day, my family pauses prior to the annual meal to express our gratitude to the Lord for His blessings on the family as a whole and on the nation in which we are privileged to live.

We never went to a restaurant for Thanksgiving again; but it was a good lesson.

Jack “William Bradford” Parker