The Ghost of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was truly a day of thanks this year. Surrounded by family, knowing that our relationships are bound with love, and realizing how fragile relationships can be and for that matter, life. As fate would have it, Bubbie and Sweet Pea ran into their sister-in-law just days before the holiday. Her husband, Sweet Pea’s brother, is away so they invited her and their children to Thanksgiving dinner. It had been years since they had seen each other and throughout the day, triggered by reminiscence, Bubbie was flooded with memories and emotions, neither of which he had dealt with in as many years.

Uncle Bubba was a sensitive kid that grew up in a rough part of town. He had to learn the hard way how to fight, and that meant fight to win, and to carry himself with bravado so people wouldn’t screw with him. It was counter to his natural kind and caring nature and fun loving spirit. This obviously created an internal conflict in Bubbie that he has struggled with his entire life. After many years of trying to fit into that environment, it became apparent that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. To make a long story short, by the grace of God and Sweet Pea he moved physically and mentally away from that environment. He worked hard both on himself and at getting ahead at work and has become a successfully happy man. But here he was on this day thinking about the past. He knew in his heart that his old peers would think he’d gone soft, sold out, and given in. He could almost here them, 1200 miles away, talking about how cushy his life was and how he wasn’t one of them in his nice, comfortable house full of luxuries. The gloomy ghost of his past was rising inside him. As much as he knew that their opinions weren’t true, he could feel that it had to be dealt with hastily before it grabbed a hold of his heart.

Here is the thing; more often than not you don’t have control of who you have for your peers, but you do have control over how much you interact with them. It took the toughness that Bubbie learned in his childhood to get to where he is now. It is his bulldogged tenacity to fight to win that keeps him moving ahead in life. Those old peers cannot appreciate the strength and resilience that Bubbie has had to lean on over and over to live life on his terms because they haven’t walked in his shoes. While they were out cheating on their wives, Bubbie was home romancing Sweet Pea. While they were getting divorced, he was working on forgiveness. While they were huntin’ and fishin’ he was at his kids’ ball games. While they were hanging out in the beer garden, he was home working on improving his property; being the best husband and father that her knew how to be. While they were driving home to saw some “Zs” he was driving to night school to earn straight “As” in getting a college degree. In Bubbie’s view, those old peers are old peers because he left them in the past; the future is bright, life is good and he has so many things for which to be thankful.