11-27-2024 5:04am

THE MEASURE: Giving Thanks

Lesley Misko Editor

A 1979 BASH alum, Philip Repko is a career educator who has worked in the classroom and in administration in public and private schools. He has been writing for fun and no profit since he was a teenager and is excited to announce the release of his first book of poetry, Pieces of April. The 165-page volume had a November 23, 2024, debut via Anxiety Press, and is currently available on Amazon (https://a.co/d/d1URRrN). Phil lives with his wife Julie in Gilbertsville and is the father of three outstanding children, two of whom are also poets and writers. He vacillates between poetry and prose, as the spirit beckons, and is working sporadically on a novella and a memoir.

by Philip Repko

My grandfather, whom I knew for only the first three years of my life, died in a car accident on November 25, 1964. He was in the process of bringing a Thanksgiving turkey to my family. He was worried, I suppose, that my parents and their 6 kids might not have the wherewithal or the money to afford a turkey. He may also simply have wanted to see his son and the rest of us, since our contact with him was limited. Perhaps he wanted to see his daughter-in-law, who had recently learned she was pregnant with triplets.

He was also drunk. And driving. That is what my father told me years later. I clearly remember the scene, even though I had just turned three at the time. My father strode into the kitchen of the beloved Farmhouse, placed a heavy package on the counter, and announced, “Well. Pop Pop’s dead!”

My Dad knew how to work a room of children from 7 years old, down to less than 1. How do I know that? I can picture the scene and hear it, some 60 years later. I do not remember Thanksgiving that year, only that four word sentence.

Fast forward about 35 years, and the scene that springs to mind places me with a glass of scotch - on the rocks - at about 2:30 pm. My wife and family and all the in-laws were within arm’s reach. The Thanksgiving Day football game between Boyertown and Spring-Ford had been played that morning. I had been on the sidelines - coaching.

In this vignette, I sat near the sliding glass doors, next to the fireplace, while giant, puffy snowflakes blanketed the deck outside. I pretended to watch the Cowboys or Lions football game, while not so secretly nodding off to sleep before dinner. I was tired, warm, and cold all at once, so a nap with a bit of spirit made a little swill of heaven. I sat alone in a crowd of family.

Both scenes are stored in the Thanksgiving archives of memory, yet only with some concerted effort do they rise to the forefront. We rarely conjure the past well enough to let the present hear it and shout with joy.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday – or it was. For my extended family, but also for the larger culture in America, the immediacy and the urgency of life has not been kind to this uniquely American celebration. Yes, people across the country still travel the most on the fourth Thursday in November, but it feels as if the warmth of the fire, or the tingle of the snowflakes, is too often missing from the room.

During the brunt of my childhood, Thanksgiving dinner resembled every other dinner. Except there was turkey, stuffing, pickled onions, cranberry sauce, and yams. These were rarely served individually, and never all together, except on Thanksgiving. With nine kids and 2 parents, we always had a crowd. In addition, high school friends might join to break bread on any given Sunday. I don’t remember traveling to visit others on the holiday, either.

The shortened school week was notable, of course, but I don’t remember much fanfare. My grandmother, Carrie, probably attended. Aunt Maggie helped with the cooking in the early years, and there may have been a special guest from time to time. Other than that, not much was notable.

Now, when we hit the high school years, the holiday played out a bit differently. My brothers and I all were on the football team. Our high school always played a Thanksgiving Day football game, at 10:00 am. So, from 1972 until 1981, Thanksgiving Day included a game, often in chilly or downright cold weather. My dad always attended. Always.

For me, specifically, there was also the 2-year stint where the noon whistle to end the football game was also an alarm that basketball practice was set to start in about an hour. Yes, the basketball coach called practice on Thanksgiving each year, in preparation for the start of the season the very next day.

I have a crystal clear recollection of Thanksgiving 1977, when arguably the best team in Boyertown football history won a Ches-Mont Championship. The game was at home, and I and the quarterback, Kent Hallman, showered to remove the football field mud at about 12:30 pm. then put on our basketball sneakers and trudged into basketball practice by 1:00 pm. My friends were celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime championship. Kent and I were trying find our basketball legs, huffing and puffing, but with smiles on our faces.

The next year, after an away game at Spring-Ford, Kent and I trudged into practice a few minutes late, as the trip home from the game ate up some time. Kent was heavily involved in the practice, as he projected to start and play a critical role. I ran the conditioning drills, but otherwise had no clear expectation to see the court much for the season.

When practice had ended, the coach called wanted to see me.. He didn’t address me by name, just told the assistant coach to send Repko over to him.

I was still walking toward him in an otherwise empty gym, when he started talking to the wall to his left. I brushed my Bobby Sherman bangs from before my eyes.

“We’re not sure if we can use you this year,” he said. “Get a haircut. If we decide to keep you, they’ll be a uniform next to your locker. See you tomorrow!”

Being thankful was a bit elusive that year.

These snapshots of Turkey Days past and passed are deliberately dissimilar. You see, we humans have a hard time being comfortable with gratitude. We are wired to keep ourselves safe and alive, and so we cannot help but perseverate on the negative or threatening. Finding our bliss is a learned skill.

The Thanksgiving holiday is then an invitation to mindfulness. The national holiday was adopted specifically to call attention to our blessings. Culturally, we have been obedient in acknowledging the call to communion, but we are not always faithful in reverently receiving the sacrament.

Of course, we have a difficult time with giving thanks. Gratitude requires objectivity and sobriety of thought. How can we possibly be grateful when we fail or refuse to stop and smell life’s roses? Instead, we hurtle from crisis to perceived crisis, often with flowers in our hands, just fraught with urgency and tension. All we need to do is inhale with intent, and the fragrance is certain to overwhelm our mood. Alas, we continue to breathe merely autonomically.

This Thanksgiving? I will follow my comfortable strategy for locating my bliss. I will track down a high school football game, because high school football on Thanksgiving is for me the epitome of community, in all its ideal manifestations. I will deliver Thanksgiving chili – an adopted tradition – to immediate family and in-laws who like life spicy and hot.

I hope that my sister-in-law will host a gathering of all the in-laws, but this may well be the last time she does so, as she and her husband are trading their current empty nest for another.

We may get together with my side of the family, but that event, should it happen, will be spontaneous and more sparsely attended.

Through any or all of these eventualities, I promise myself to take stock of all the reasons I have to give thanks.

I will be grateful for a wife who has been true, and foolish enough to stay with me, for more than 38 years.

I will thank the lord for three children, their spouses, and the imminent arrival (next spring) of an 8th perfect grandchild.

I will appreciate that each position throughout my work life has given me a sense of purpose, and a means to contribute to the greater good.

I will celebrate the attainment of a lifetime challenge and goal: the publication of a book of poetry that has been about 50 years in the making. (My mother in Heaven will be especially pleased, since she started telling me I should write a book when I was in fifth grade.)

Most importantly, I will especially gratified that we live in a country that has proven to be strong, resilient, and resourceful. I will be hopeful that we will continue to stave off threats and challenges, to persevere when things seem desperate, and that we will find our way back to common goals, sweeping support and tolerance, and enduring trust that we can regain the footing we had when pilgrims and the native Americans held the first Thanksgiving way back in 1621.

On Thanksgiving Day in 1978, there was a uniform in front of my locker.

I pushed the hair out of my eyes right after I pulled the jersey over my head.

I think I’ll have my scotch neat this year.