As we traveled home from family Thanksgiving in North Mississippi a few years ago, I was struck by the bleakness of the landscape. The memory of commuting to finish my last two years at Ole Miss brought back a vision of late Octobers and early Novembers that would rival anything New England in the fall has to offer. My route on a two-lane road from Pontotoc to Oxford wound up and down through the Appalachian foothills, still forested with native trees. Evergreens mingled with deciduous trees sporting every shade of yellow, orange, and red. I gloried in the beauty, knowing full well that drizzly, grey November would follow by the end of the month.
As we traveled back to Hattiesburg, I thought of that fall beauty, now replaced by ground scrabble fields of crops plowed under - some dotted white with cotton remnants, bare trees in filigree silhouetted against the sky, a lazy sun through hovering clouds, dotted rolls of hay, and a rusty tin roof house. The brilliant fall colors were now faded to bronze and brown with only stretches of green winter cover in farmers’ fall plantings of fescue.
The whole atmosphere made November appropriate for Thanksgiving. My sister in New Albany had become the traditional hostess for our celebration in our mother’s last years, because of proximity to her and a gracious spirit. The tradition lingered, as traditions will do, after Mama’s death and the loss of other family members. I had relished our joyful celebration that welcomed newer family members, mingled with nostalgia for those who were no longer with us and those who could not make the trip.
I saw an analogy in the landscape. As much as we love the idea of thankfulness and have plenty of reasons to give thanks, life is sometimes tough and loss has a way of mingling into our observances. November and Thanksgiving become a fitting paradox as they seem to heighten both joy and sorrow. I think Winnie the Pooh expressed the sentiment of how to be thankful in the midst of that paradox in my favorite of his quotes, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”