Who Can You Invite To Your Table?
(Writing 31 Days Project)
Today is the last day of the month of October and in the coming weeks we will celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends. The longer I live the more I realize that family is THE connecting piece to our entire existence. It is the building of the family unit that determines who we are and how we respond to the outside world. Our family is our strength and stronghold to much of our personal growth.
As a young girl, we spent a lot of time with family. I really never thought about the significance of it but I love being with both sides of my family. My Mother’s parents, Clifford and Lula Long, lived within 15 minutes of us and we spent a great deal of time with them. We had family cookouts with my Mother’s brother and sisters who for some time all lived within a short distance of each other in the same town of Jacksonville , Fl.
We took regular trips to my Father’s home place in Hampton, South Carolina to spend time with his father, Alec P. Vaughan, Sr. and his brother and sisters who lived in town. With either trip, we were a family unit developing relationships, building love stories and having memories that would carry each of us through our lives together.
To this day, my cousins and I have relationships because as young people we spent time together, shared the same memories with our grand parents and on the home place and remember those times to be happy and productive. Each of us often talk about similar tales and certainly about our families and the blessing bestowed on us by our grandparents and parents.
The up and coming holiday of Thanksgiving is full steam ahead. We will have opportunity to be together with our family unit and friends. This would definitely be the time to invite family to have their feet under your table. Maybe there is a long lost cousin who should get an invite or a brother or sister who lives far away. Make the invite anyhow even if you think they may not come because you could strike a nerve and meet a need not being talked about. You could build another bridge in the family unit and one that will bond together the family sinew even stronger.
Whatever you do, “Thanksgiving is a family kind of time” so don’t miss asking family to be together and if they can’t come, your invite will let them know they are with you in the spirit of the season.
Go ahead. Make that call.
Josie
