Pass the Yams, Sam?

My thanksgiving is unapologetically ideal. The scene in my house on the fourth Thursday in November every year is exactly what people would expect from a large Christian family in the American heartland. In fact, if Norman Rockwell had ever needed a model family for the Thanksgiving-issue cover of the Saturday Evening Post, we would be the perfect candidates. Ornate name cards bedeck the long wooden table, and we sip white wine—or milk for the kids—from silver chalices. We salivate over a roast turkey, spiced yams, oven-top stuffing and the kind of rolls you could rest your head on at night.

I literally have an Uncle Sam. I kid you not.

Together with my Aunt Patty, they are affectionately known as Salmon Patty, and they drive down from Indiana every year with my three Hoosier cousins. And then there’s the Sparks clan from northern Kentucky; my own grandparents; Adam and Elizabeth and John; and finally my three siblings. Am I forgetting anyone?

Because of my family, I enjoy Thanksgiving exceedingly. Nothing is more important to me than family, and you have to savor it when we’re all under the same blessed roof. And don’t forget about the Derby pie, either. This holiday also reminds me how lucky I am, that by random chance or divine Providence or whatever, I was born into a beautiful, robust family with the chance of a lifetime: the ability to go out into an unfair world with an unfair advantage, to pursue whichever path I choose, and to “raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.”