By Brendan McLaughlin

Thanksgiving Day 1988, Austin Texas

My wife, Sandy and our two toddlers knew almost no one in the whole state of Texas. We had moved from San Francisco to accept my first television reporting assignment. And though we were technically yankeees, our new next door neighbors welcomed us on move-in day with a 5 foot long banner printed on their home computer. "Welcome to Austin,  McLaughlins!"    With the excitement of the new job and new surroundings, Thanksgiving snuck up on me. At 30 years old, it would be my first major holiday spent away from home. Away from father's piano playing, away from my brothers' cigarette smoking and joke telling, away from my sisters' roughhousing, away from my mother's cooking.

As the day approached, our neighbors, the Garretts suggested we share the cooking duties and celebrate Thanksgiving together. Capital idea, I thought. With the two families, we'd have a respectable sized group of at least nine people. If I drank enough, it would seem like 18 - closer to the usual number at home. Since Sandy is an accomplished cook, she got dibs on the key elements of turkey and pumpkin pie. Margie Garrett would handle the stuffing and other side dishes.

Funny how we become accustomed to familiar flavors. Remember the first time you had spaghetti at a neighbor's house? Your friend's mom may be using the same recipe off the package of pasta as your mother, but it tastes weird. Maybe Mrs. Jones uses a little extra tomato paste or a little less garlic, but it's not the same and it's not right.

I expected Margie Garrett's stuffing to taste different than Margaret McLaughlin's stuffing but I didn't expect what happened next.  After toasting our new friends and the health of our children and the abundance of our table,  I took a bite of stuffing. Ground beef? Yes, it was.  There was ground beef in the stuffing. I started to cry. No one noticed because they were diving into their own plates, but I was momentarily overcome with a combination of homesickness, nostalgia and culinary outrage that I was unable to process. It's not that it tasted  bad. It was just so...foreign, so Texan, so not San Franciscan. The absence of sage and those springy little croutons represented all  that was missing from that day. Every member of that crazy Irish tribe of mine was 2,000 miles away having a fine time without me.

Sandy saw my reddened eyes and understood immediately.   Then she shot me a look that said "dry up and eat your stuffing".  After a few more bites and a gulp of red wine I started to settle down and remember what day it was- Thanksgiving.  I realized how lucky I was to have these kind and generous neighbors who opened their hearts to virtual strangers.  I remembered that Sandy and I had gathered up our children and left our familiar lives for a reason. We came to start a new career and carve out our own future together. I understood that it was time to grow up and start creating my own tribe and my own Thanksgiving tradition.

Sandy and I have not been home  for Thanksgiving in 20 years. In the television business, November is a key ratings period in which nobody takes vacation.  We've had some siblings visit us and we've dined at the homes of neighbors and friends.  The tribe isn't as big as it was in my childhood and nobody smokes anymore, but the stuffing tastes just like Mom's. And we're thankful for that.  

Have a wonderful Holiday. See you Sunday for Flashpoint.

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