Traditions and Gratitudes

By Neal Lemery

(published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 11/27/2025)

I’m sentimental about Thanksgiving, the first big holiday of wintertime, when the expectations and the preparations for the holiday are not on steroids. It is a time for gathering with friends and family, with no expectations for frenzy and rampant consumerism. Just a good meal, good company and enjoyable conversations. Abundant food and dessert, and love are expected.

Our family has some long-standing traditions. My mom always set the table with an extra setting, and moved an extra chair to the dining room table. My young curiosity would ask “why”, to which my mom always replied “You never know.” And, almost every year, that chair would be filled by a sudden guest in need of a place to belong to for the holiday. They added a lot to the spirit of the day, and their smile at being included as part of the family gathering always raised our spirits and added more love and kindness to the day.

We get out some of the special dishes and my uncle’s candlesticks. The silver and pearl sugar spoon that my great great grandmother stashed on her wagon on the Oregon Trail is a must. The ordeals of our ancestors always are a topic of some reflection and conversation. And, I always sense the spriritual presence of those family members and friends who have passed on, choosing to remember their smiles and laughter around the table.

We also speak of our gratitudes. As we sit down at the table and begin to pass the food around, we each take a turn on saying what we are grateful for over the past year. It is a healthy ritual, as people often share some experience that the rest of us were unaware of. Figuring out what I need to contribute, as my gratitude, often humbles me, as I don’t often “count my blessings” or take time to pause and reflect on what is really important in our lives.

It warms my heart to find the words and the experiences for which I am grateful.

One year, the brother of our foster son filled the “empty chair”. We had gotten an unexpected call Thanksgiving morning, and learned he had no place to go for the holiday. He was warmly welcomed, and his smile brightened the room. When it came his turn to share his gratitudes, he spoke from his heart, and began to cry. Well, we all did. He was the spirit of Thanksgiving and kindness that year, his remarks reminding all of us of the “reason for the season” and what family is all about.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Cleaning Up After Fathers’ Day

By Neal Lemery

(published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, June 18, 2024)

I’m always relieved when Fathers’ Day is over for the year. For me, it is a mix of emotions and experiences, with memories both sweet and awkward, sometimes excruciatingly painful, for me and my kids.

The greeting card industry portrays the day as an overly sweet and happy day, offering cards with sentimental words, and traditional gifts such as T shirts and golf balls, and barbecues and ball games. Dad as hero, the perfect parent in our lives. In our society, reality often doesn’t resemble what commercialism tries to paint as warm, fuzzy, and normal.

Yet, it is a day of awkwardness. What if one’s experiences and relationships with a father was strained, dysfunctional, full of abandonment, or downright dangerous and frightening? What if those wounds haven’t healed, there’s a lot of unresolved anger and neglect, or simply rage about not showing up in your life?

The kids I call my kids wrestle with all of this. Some simply ignore the day, while others send a short, yet sincere one line message on social media. Often, the pain of dealing with hard relationships is best kept quiet. I respect all of those responses. They are genuine, real, and honest, and not found in the greeting card section of the store.

Most of my kids take the safe path, and don’t open up to express what they are feeling, or how to be the kid on Fathers’ Day. For most of us, silence is golden, safe, and non-committal.

I know they love me, and I love them. I also know I’m not the perfect father, that I’ve made mistakes and caused some harm. I like to think I’ve done more good parenting than bad, and that I’m still learning how to be a good dad. I’d like to hope they know that about me.

I’m here for them, after all these years, and perhaps that is enough of a role to play on a day when we are supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy, that Dad is a hero, the fulfillment of the ideal Dad. I don’t need a card or a new box of golf balls to get that recognition. Hokie commercial gifts don’t really express what we feel for each other, anyway.

The father-kid relationship is complicated, anyway. My feelings for the best fathers I’ve had in my life aren’t based on genetics, but on genuine mutual respect, working to be solid mentors and supporters of a kid trying to navigate life and to figure out who I’d be when I grew up. Even as an adult, I needed that genuine fathering, that relationship where one could go deep and feel respected and nurtured.

Family life is better anyway, when there is honesty, mutual respect, and acknowledgement that we all struggle with emotional pain and needing to feel good about ourselves, that we all have the potential for doing good for others.

I used to think that biology and genetics didn’t really matter. It was what happened today, building a good home life and showing compassion and empathy. But, recent scientific work is showing me that past generations’ trauma and anxiety lies deep within us, and is passed on to new generations, being a deeply ingrained aspect of our own psychology and thinking. Part of our work on becoming better people is recognizing that genetic influence, that power of past trauma to cause pain, working on giving air to that history, and patterns of behavior. Healing ourselves, and facing our past, even back several generations, is part of our work in changing our world, and in raising our kids. That work is part of parenting, part of building a better society today.

Perhaps that work, that realization, should be woven into a good Fathers’ Day observance, a day of recognition and healing, a day to celebrate healthy love between parents and kids. Those conversations, those “going deep” talks with loved ones would go far in helping us be better dads, and make for a well-celebrated and well-observed holiday.

6/18/2024

Memorial Day is Personal to Me

By Neal Lemery

(published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 5/26/2024)

Memorial Day is an awkward holiday for me, celebrated publicly for the three day weekend, the winding down of school and planning for summer fun. Our culture celebrates the beginnings of barbeques and picnics at the beach, family gatherings, and the official beginning of summer.

Yet, it is a time of reflection and sadness for me, a time to recall the lives of ancestors who fought and often died in war, a time to recall personal sacrifices for the common good, of conflict waged for the hoped for betterment of humankind. Memorial Day is a way to honor that, but we are more likely to ignore the reality of war, death and sacrifice. It is, instead, a day of disconnectedness and apathy.

Not many people are alive now who remember my grandfather. He lived a rich and fulfilling life as a farmer, taking pride in a well-managed dairy farm and helping to raise a family. He was reluctant to talk about his life and it took twenty years for me to gather the details.

The twelfth child of a German dairy farmer, he was drafted into the Kaiser’s army at the beginning of World War I, and sent to the Russian front. The Russians captured him, and he spent three years in a prisoner of war camp. He joined other soldiers in making their escape in the middle of a bitterly cold winter. One of the few stories he told was of walking through the snow, living off frozen potatoes, as they headed west towards home. He would weep silently at holiday meals, cherishing the bounty of the table, and the warmth of his home, only once mentioning that some of his fellow soldiers froze to death during their escape.

I’ve stood in cemeteries and war memorials, stunned by the thousands of tombstones and the tales of wars now only honored in dusty books and mossy granite monuments. I try to make sense of it all. I listen to the stories of my own generation who went to war, some not coming back, others deeply affected by the horrors they experienced. And, I keep seeing the debris of traumatized lives who fought in newer wars, still trying to find some sense, some higher justification for their sacrifice.

When I was a kid, many people called the day Decoration Day, a term left over from after the Civil War, when people gathered flowers and went to cemeteries to honor the soldiers who died in that war.

Memorial Day is a day where I am out of sorts. Firing up the barbeque and putting the flag up on the side of the house are part of my rituals for the day, but I find no peace, no action that gives me satisfaction for this day. I remember my grandfather, who chose to be mostly silent about his service in a nearly forgotten war. As I peel the potatoes for dinner, I remember his story, and can feel the icy cold of a Russian potato field in the middle of winter, a memory told and, over a hundred years later, still remembered.

And, every year, I read this poem, written by a soldier trying to put his tears into print, to try to make sense of the horrors and casualties of war. I cry as I read it today, the words raw and bloody still. When I stood in a cemetery in France, overlooking headstones in fields that seemed endless, I read this poem, engraved in marble, speaking its truth to me and all those who came after me, to honor and to remember.

In Flanders Fields

BY JOHN MCCRAE

(1918, public domain)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

5/26/2024

Simple Gifts

(published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 11/29/21

by Neal Lemery

The holidays are upon us, with the usual seasonal barrage of promotions, sales, Black Friday, and an e-mail inbox overflowing with all of those special deals. Bargains galore! A good part of me recoils and rebels from such marketing and promotion. In reality, I really have quite enough “stuff”. And the real pleasures come from time with friends and some peaceful contemplation in the company of some candlelight.

We recently visited a big box store, needing to replace a laptop that had finally died. The aisles were overflowing with at least several hundred flat screen TVs that had somehow managed to get through the supply chain bottlenecks, so they could now effectively clutter up the aisles at the giant store.

Surely there aren’t that many people who have that item at the top of their holiday wish list. I wondered out loud if Americans really need even more flat screen TVs. Can’t you only watch one at a time, and, by now, there have been enough TVs sold so people can have one in every room? Not that I think that there’s all that much being broadcast or streamed that is all that worthy of my time and attention.

I’m reminded of the old hymn, Simple Gifts, its lyrics clearly calling us back to reflect on the “reason for the season”. The song isn’t in the Christmas song books, but maybe it should be.

“’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we will not be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.”

This year, I’ve shortened my own “wish list”, realizing after all of our pandemic time of reducing the frenzy of modern life, that the simple things are really the best. Quiet, reflective time, time over coffee with a good friend, a walk in the sunshine, or listening to the murmurs of rain on a walk in a peaceful place.

I’ve sorted through some of the stuff that often clutters up my life. I’m giving a cherished family heirloom to my niece, so she and her kids can retell the story of how the ancestors brought the chair over the Oregon Trail, tying it to the back of the covered wagon, and how it occupied my grandmother’s living room, in a place of honor and storytelling. I’ve retold that story enough now and it’s time for a new generation to have that pleasure. And I think Grandma would be happy with that.

The added bonus with that gift giving is a road trip and family time, as well as the passing on of some memories to people who will appreciate it.

I’ll still write my Christmas cards and send out a newsy, perhaps hokey, letter to friends and family I connect with only a few times a year. I could substitute those sentiments via an e-mail or blog post, but don’t we enjoy holding a letter from a friend while enjoying a cup of tea on a rainy afternoon? And, I like the ritual of addressing the envelopes and sticking on the Santa stamps. I’ll probably stir up some Christmas fudge and a batch of cookies, savoring the memories of doing that with family who have long since departed this world, walking down memory lane with some time-worn recipes.

But I don’t need much more than that. A few walks under the downtown Christmas lights, and a cheery concert or two of holiday classics will gladden my heart, without the need for dealing with the mobs on Black Friday.

It is a simple time, celebrating simple things, simple gifts like friendship, caring for others, and just enjoying the simple pleasures of the holidays.

11/28/21

Story Telling

“The Holidays” seem to be the time of story telling. Old family stories, one’s adventures growing up, or work tales, all find their way to the dining room over a big meal, or at some other festive event.

We watch our favorite holiday movies, enjoying the retelling of familiar, heart warming tales. We laugh, we cry, and we find love.

These last few weeks, I’ve heard other stories, stories that we won’t find on the Hallmark channel, or something to share with friends at a party.

These stories are honest, deep, often horrific. Yet, they need to be told, so that we can keep our feet on the ground, and truly know our friends, neighbors, the people we walk with on our life’s journey. In that storytelling, we find our power and we change the world.

A good friend recently responded to a Facebook discussion on white privilege, and shared his childhood and young adult stories. His memories were horrific, chilling, and disturbing in the sense that a family could inflict that degree of pain on an innocent child. He’s one of the good guys, doing amazing service in the community. Seeing him loving others, you would not suspect the pain he’s endured. Yet, he is today because of what he endured.

Several of my buddies I visit at the nearby youth correctional facility shared some of their stories with me, too. They opened up to me, pouring out their pain, their anger, their loneliness, and, their continuing capacity to be loving and kind.

One young man told me of his younger brother’s sudden death last week, how he learned of it five days later, how it feels to not be able to go to his brother’s funeral and mourn with his family.

Another young man told me of being abused and neglected, and then when he told others, they did not listen to him. In listening, I gave him a place for his voice, a way out of his dark tunnel, maybe even lit a candle for him.

Yet another young man ate his first Twinkie as we played cards and talked. He’s seventeen and was locked in the basement for years. I nodded, I smiled. I dealt the cards as he thoughtfully described every aspect of eating the treat, in sweet, delicious detail.

He also talked about learning to write, and hold a pencil. For the first sixteen years of his life, he did not write; he never held a pencil or a crayon. Today, he struggles with his writing, as his fingers slowly are developing the fine motor skills of pencil holding.

I look at my own hands, and wonder, unable to imagine what his life has been like, and what it feels like to hold a pencil for the first time at sixteen, and eat your first Twinkie at seventeen. In between my tears, I listen.

I listen. It is the most important job I have, the listening. Listening with compassion, with all my heart. Not judging, not condemning, not demeaning or minimizing; just listening and opening my heart to their heart. Heart to heart, truly listening and caring. Don’t we need more of that in this world? Wouldn’t lives be empowered, enriched simply because someone listened and cared?

Stories. They are all around us. They are inside of us, each one of us. In the hustle and bustle of the holidays, perhaps we need to just sit and listen to the storytellers.

And be filled with gratitude that we are able to take the time to listen and care. My holiday errands can wait. It is time to listen.

— Neal Lemery 11/25/2016