We're from "Jonkers"

Old Knudsen has suggested we write about some of our choice Christmas experiences--I've already done that.

So instead, I will tell you all about a memorable Thanksgiving. My husband and I had been married about five months and were living in New Jersey. We couldn't afford a trip back to the Midwest where the rest of our family would be celebrating, so we decided to stay put.

We knew a woman who was exceptionally generous, sometimes just because she wanted something and sometimes just because. She tended to collect strays, you could say, and assembled this bunch for Thanksgiving dinner like I have never seen. I hadn't learned to cook yet, so I was given the job of potato pealing.

There we were, two very young newlyweds; the woman and her four children; her Italian-emigrant mother who had the typical Italian/NJ accent; a newly divorced and very fractured woman with her three little children; two Cuban emigrants, a sister who had escaped Cuba via Paris and later retrieved her brother (the brother was wheel-chair bound); a one-legged Jewish woman who was also wheelchair bound (I loved her dearly!); and a clothing designer for JC Penney who was experiencing the most distinctive and thorough midlife crisis, one so counter to his character that his wife did not attend the dinner. He brought his adult daughter who was mildly retarded.

We all sat around this gigantic table made up of smaller tables lined up end to end, and we passed the roast beast. It was the most amazing group of people all in one room--everybody with their flaws out there for all to see. We sat there for hours chattering about this and that--me trying to have a conversation with the clothing designer who wanted to talk about a fantasy involving a chocolate cake and a bathtub, the divorced woman trying to hold it together, the Italian trying to understand the Cubans--The Italian would say, "where are you from?" And the Cubans would say, "We're from Jonkers?" "From where?" "Jonkers." "What are you saying?" "Mother, they're from Yonkers."

It went on and on, and it was the most lovely and memorable Thanksgiving I believe I will ever experience. Thanksgiving is a day when we purposefully express thankfulness for provision and relative bounty. As much as I appreciate spending it with family, enjoying this particular meal with a mixed up group of people you normally wouldn't have the chance to sit down with made so much sense.

It made as much sense as pilgrims, who risked everything to travel an entire ocean to find freedom, sitting at a table with a group of natives who helped them survive their first winter.