Thanks Giving

Thanksgiving 1961 in my hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was warm, warm enough for my cousins and me to run around outside our house on North Summit Avenue without coats while our fathers watched football and our grandmother and mothers prepared a meal for approximately ten adults and close to that number of kids aged eight or younger.

I was five years old, and I was winded before the first round of games was done.

Memories are funny things. I have a very vague recollection of being knocked over by a Saint Bernard when I was a toddler, and a happy memory of French toast for breakfast the day my sister Maureen came home from the hospital. I was about six weeks shy of my third birthday. But Thanksgiving 1961 I remember clearly. I was so tired. I could hardly breathe. You look at photos of me from that day, and the shadows under my eyes were darker and deeper than at any other point in my life.

I don’t know whether it was my grandmother or one of the uncles or aunts or maybe even one of the neighbors who said something to my mother about the way I looked that day, but Mom listened. The next day, she took me to the doctor. He determined I had pneumonia, and the infection had spread to both lungs. I was in the hospital that night, and stayed there for a full week. My parents weren’t allowed to stay with me, and my security blanket disappeared the first day, no doubt thanks to a nun who didn’t understand or didn’t care that that was my only connection to the world I knew. It was the most frightening week of my life.

I’ve had a lot of good Thanksgivings since then. But this year, I will be giving thanks for Grandma Smith, Aunt Peggy, Aunt Bev, Aunt Dorothy, Uncle David, Uncle Jim, Uncle Craig, and Uncle John, especially whichever one of them told my parents I looked horrible that day–because whoever it was may have saved my life.