The Thanksgivings of my Midwest childhood met the standard expectations of the time. The day began with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, continued with the coming together of three generations of family over a groaning table, slid into that certain sound of a cold-weather, outdoor football game broadcast on television, and concluded with a long, anticlimactic drive home in the dark.

At times, close to 20 of us squeezed together on tables strung together into the living room. For a long time, a new baby joined us each year, provided either by my mother or my father’s oldest sister. The turkey was always late coming out of the oven. When it was finally ready, we gathered at the table.

Grace was offered, accompanied by a wisecrack from my father’s Aunt Arlene. She was the mouthy, spunky one with the dyed red hair and the off-center white skunk stripe over one temple. Aunt Arlene was my model of aging well. Though as I think of it now, she wouldn’t then have been much older than I am now, and I am not even thinking of dying my hair red.

My father’s family wasn’t pious. We didn’t dwell over grace or talk much about being thankful. If the meal was hot and ready it was time to dish up.

We ate well. Besides the turkey, on the table were my mother’s 14-Day Sweet Pickles and her famous Cold Water Buns, neglected in the first round of eating but beloved and essential for the sandwich-and-leftover reprise in the early evening. There was, of course a “Jell-O salad” (this was the Midwest). Favorites were the raspberry gelatin made with crushed pineapple, black cherries, and Coca Cola. Or there was the lime gelatin, also made with crushed pineapple. This one incorporated cottage cheese and was dolloped with Miracle Whip.

Though the meal was the centerpiece of the day, it lasted only as long as it lasted. Eaters concentrated on the food, and didn’t linger over conversation. Afterwards, the men – who had little to say to one another past the initial catching up – sat comfortably in front of the football game. The women, who did have things to say, retired to the kitchen to talk about recipes, children, and family news. They meanwhile cleaned up after the first meal and prepared for the second (mind you, I was born in the ’50s, and that was the traditional division of labor then).

We kids ran around the neighborhood, thinking up games for ourselves. No one was concerned with the dangers of unsupervised play. I remember when one cousin was fixated on Long John Silver. Down in the basement, he produced a lot of rags torn into strips. We all bent one foot back behind our bottoms and bound it up tightly, then tied on a stick for a wooden leg. We stomped around happily in that supremely uncomfortable position for a couple of hours.

No matter how much we had eaten in the afternoon, there was the need for another meal to fortify us for the drive home. One year, after a wild day of trying to keep up with the older kids, my little cousin Bruce was sat in the highchair for the second meal. We older kids watched in delight when he projectile-vomited, fascinated by the long, colorful stream that arced out of his mouth, cleared the highchair tray and splattered on the dining room floor. We whooped and shrieked and would have re-enacted it if we could have, prompting some rare sharp words from my aunt.

Where have all these family-rich, thankless Thanksgivings gone? Gone the way of all old memories, faded into something that seems just out of reach but can never again be touched. The uncles are all gone. The children have become middle-aged and are scattered over the continent – I’m one of the ones who went the farthest. I haven’t seen some of those cousins in decades.

But I find myself curiously thankful for those holidays in a way I was never prompted to be in my youth. After all, those people drove hours to be together, not just because they were family, but because they liked each other’s company even after they ran out of things to say. Old shoe comfort was good enough for them, and indeed, is good enough for me.

I no longer make the “Jell-O salads,” but my family and friends-who-have-become-family have our own time-honored traditions. Rita and I barely have to discuss the menu. There is universal satisfaction around the table when all the favored foods are arranged on the plates and the forks are lifted for the first bite. Sometimes a new dish appears, or a new face joins us around the table, and that serves only to add piquancy to the ones we know so well. Over the years, some have sorrowfully gone missing as well. But those of us who are gathered are thankful to have made it through another year and be together again.

Across the country, hundreds of millions of people are gathering together on the same day in the same way. In the light of that massive gathering, my memories and experiences may be commonplace and unremarkable, but they are rich because they are mine, and I treasure them.

And your memories, whatever they may be, are yours. May they also enrich your life and give you reason to be thankful.