Monday, November 19, 2007 at 12:12am
That was a Thanksgiving
Column: Interesting Times
There was a Thanksgiving at 7410 Oglesby in Chicago, the long, longtime brick home of my paternal grandparents that lives forever in my mind and emotions. We were all there. Six children of Herman and Rega Jane, my grandparents, and 12 grandchildren running through the rooms, working the slot machine in the basement, jumping on the beds in the dorm-like upstairs where bunk beds lined the walls. My three aunts and their five children were all living at my grandparents that Thanksgiving. One aunt was divorced. (Later we learned there was talk that the husband had had an affair with another sister, but that is long ago and far away and who really knows now?) My two other aunts were widowed. One husband was killed in World War II, another from an early, unexpected brain tumor.
But all I knew that long-ago Thanksgiving was that we were all there. The three sisters navigated the kitchen, small for the size of the house, I thought. The men sat in the living room facing the street, and the younger children would cling to knees, then up and away to join the older children as we all waited for my grandfather to appear. Dr. Herman Niels Bundesen was the central figure in all his children's lives. He lived, or had his own quarters, in the back of the house off the kitchen. His driver would bring him home from the Cook Country Health Department building and leave him at the back door. One went up in the family estimation with an invitation to come into his apartment and talk to him or listen, as he rode his stationary exercise bike — as he did until his death.
When Grandpa entered the living room, all of us children would jump on him and he would roll on the floor with us, pushing the boys off and telling the girls to punch him in the stomach to see how hard his middle was — "from isometrics," he would say. "Breathe in and out as much as you can." Then after a few minutes of horseplay we all would adjourn — the adults to the dining room table and the children to the adjoining game room where card tables with white linen cloths had been set up for the day.
In that long-ago day I knew my grandfather had a position of authority in the city by the way people responded to my surname and by the way his children held him in some awe, but I didn't know until I was an adult that he had been coroner at the time of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and that the newspaper photograph of him pointing to the slain victims on the garage floor would ensure that as long as there is the World Wide Web his ghost will be with us, even as each of his six children has passed on and Thanksgiving at 7410 lives on only in the minds of a few of us grandchildren. Now, the Web tells me, someone named Melody Martin Savage, secretary of the 1971 University of Chicago Lab School, has that address. There is some remote link to Ms. Savage, if she still lives there, as I went to the Lab School kindergarten.
There are other Thanksgivings: the year I drove from upstate Connecticut to Newport, R.I., to cook dinner for a friend's 90-year-old parents, the dinners in New York City with Jon and Claudia and family, the Thanksgiving in Sweden at Catherine's, the one in Paris that I prepared for my son and daughter and their friends. All those and more are a varied series of grateful days. Now I am the grandparent, and although I do not know as of today whether Thanksgiving will be at my home this year or at friends', what I do know is that I will attend church in the morning as I have for half a century, hear the president's address to the nation and listen with gratitude to the congregation as, one by one, they share their gratitude for blessings in their own lives.
The call goes out of blessed memory: "O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his works with rejoicing. (Psalm 107:21-22)
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Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.
But all I knew that long-ago Thanksgiving was that we were all there. The three sisters navigated the kitchen, small for the size of the house, I thought. The men sat in the living room facing the street, and the younger children would cling to knees, then up and away to join the older children as we all waited for my grandfather to appear. Dr. Herman Niels Bundesen was the central figure in all his children's lives. He lived, or had his own quarters, in the back of the house off the kitchen. His driver would bring him home from the Cook Country Health Department building and leave him at the back door. One went up in the family estimation with an invitation to come into his apartment and talk to him or listen, as he rode his stationary exercise bike — as he did until his death.
When Grandpa entered the living room, all of us children would jump on him and he would roll on the floor with us, pushing the boys off and telling the girls to punch him in the stomach to see how hard his middle was — "from isometrics," he would say. "Breathe in and out as much as you can." Then after a few minutes of horseplay we all would adjourn — the adults to the dining room table and the children to the adjoining game room where card tables with white linen cloths had been set up for the day.
In that long-ago day I knew my grandfather had a position of authority in the city by the way people responded to my surname and by the way his children held him in some awe, but I didn't know until I was an adult that he had been coroner at the time of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and that the newspaper photograph of him pointing to the slain victims on the garage floor would ensure that as long as there is the World Wide Web his ghost will be with us, even as each of his six children has passed on and Thanksgiving at 7410 lives on only in the minds of a few of us grandchildren. Now, the Web tells me, someone named Melody Martin Savage, secretary of the 1971 University of Chicago Lab School, has that address. There is some remote link to Ms. Savage, if she still lives there, as I went to the Lab School kindergarten.
There are other Thanksgivings: the year I drove from upstate Connecticut to Newport, R.I., to cook dinner for a friend's 90-year-old parents, the dinners in New York City with Jon and Claudia and family, the Thanksgiving in Sweden at Catherine's, the one in Paris that I prepared for my son and daughter and their friends. All those and more are a varied series of grateful days. Now I am the grandparent, and although I do not know as of today whether Thanksgiving will be at my home this year or at friends', what I do know is that I will attend church in the morning as I have for half a century, hear the president's address to the nation and listen with gratitude to the congregation as, one by one, they share their gratitude for blessings in their own lives.
The call goes out of blessed memory: "O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his works with rejoicing. (Psalm 107:21-22)
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.