my first
American
Thanksgiving

…

Fifty-six years ago, I was at the Christian Brothers Novitiate in Narragansett, Rhode Island. That year, for the first time ever, the Novices were allowed to go home for Thanksgiving. Those of us whose families were too far away went home with friends who were local. John, whose family lived in Warwick, a half-hour north, invited me for the holiday.

I was a nineteen year-old, immigrant whose family had moved from Aprigliano, Cosenza to Northern Ontario and I now found himself in Rhode Island in late November. (There is no Thanksgiving in Italy and Canadian Thanksgiving, at that time, was an October-Monday-day-off. So, I had no reference for the significance of the holiday in American culture.)

And some 50 years later, my mind still scrolls through the memories and pictures of that first Thanksgiving:
– the den where John’s dad held court (Carl Spitzweg’s painting Bookworm hung between two colonial windows.)
– the dining room table, chairs and side-board of blond wood
– his mom’s apron trimmed with flowers
– the peas – the only food item I recognized
– the touch football game Friday morning and his brother Joe running to catch a pass
– John and I, late at night, in his old bedroom, laughing hysterically and worried his parents would hear us
– us visiting his aunt and uncle in their Providence home and the beautiful painting of roses above the sofa.

Thanksgiving has remained my favorite holiday, mainly because it’s free of family obligations and traditions and I don’t have to travel.

The featured image is of a neighborhood behind our condo – its mood is Pittsburgh-in-November. The above image came up when I searched Thanksgiving 1960s. It was the only result that included peas.