Charlie’s Brown’s Thanksgiving show was on TV two nights ago. Charlie invites all his friends over for dinner. Snoopy and Woodstock set the table outside, and serve popcorn and toast. This offends Peppermint Patty, who is expecting Tradition. I can relate, and I have a few thoughts on this.

First of all, where are the parents – the ones who always sound like trombones with toilet plungers – “wa wha wa, wha whaa wa wha?” Evidently, they just stay out of the way while Chuck’s dinner goes bad, and they’re late for dinner at his grandma’s condo, then they pile all the kids in the back of the station wagon and head over the river and through the woods. Enigmatic, if you ask me.

I don’t think Thanksgiving has anything to do with national history, Pilgrims or Indians, genocide, manifest destiny or Plymouth Rock. It’s just about family, having a day to be together because life is short and sweet. And you can eat too much pumpkin pie, but you can’t get too much love.

For the past few days, I’ve had a Thanksgiving video running in my head. Not with Charlie Brown, Linus and Snoopy, but one of my own dubious production value. Independent, maybe low budget compared to some, but a cast of stars. And angels, as it happens.

In my movie, I wake up in a cold November day, 1970s, San Joaquin Valley, California. The house is full of the smell of turkey, which has been cooking for hours. And we are all together again, Papa and Grandma, Mom and Dad & my brother Joe, as the cooking goes on and on. There’s the parade and the football games. My cousins, Aunt and Uncle arrive. (Or maybe it’s 1980s, and my cousin comes with her husband and kids – that’s good too.) We can go outside and play a while, blow off steam. There’s an amazing meal – which you can picture for yourself – with pies as far as the eye can see, all made by Grandma and Mom, by hand.

Somewhere in one of my closets, in a big old binder, is a poem I wrote about Thanksgiving over 20 years ago. I’m not going in search of it for this blog post, but there is one line I remember, “while fathers sneak for final pie/ in shadows blue and still.” That’s the best I could do back then to try and capture that late afternoon, short fall day drowsy overeating wonderment of Thanksgiving Day. College football on the tube. Kids laying around on the rugs with the dogs, aunts and uncles and grandparents all dozing on the sofas and the soft old chairs.

If I imagine myself there, and try to remember how it felt, there’s a strong feeling of safety, of belonging, of life being right and whole. But there’s paradox: I knew it was fleeting; I understood mortality and impermanence earlier than some people. That’s the metaphor of final pie: there has to be a last slice, a final feast, because everyone is on their way to somewhere else.

Very little about tomorrow will be as it was then, and I’m not complaining; I will be with people I love. Others are gone to Heaven, some are simply far away. We have folded away the place and time like a map of the road into sorrow. Or beauty – maybe it’s that – these memories are beautiful.

Life goes on. Things have changed. Which reminds me of another story I wrote a few years ago, called The Guy Who Wanted A Dog. This guy makes a deal with God, and gets to keep his dog for the rest of his life. He gets to keep things the way the are. Sort of. I won’t spoil the ending for you.

So let’s pretend that I have the power, as the Wizard of Final Pie, to let you Be in a time and place of your fondest memory, and you get to keep things the way they were then and there. From now on, until you die. (A Wizard doesn’t have the power of immortality; let’s not get carried away.) You can be back with Gram and Gramps, your Uncle Fred, your dog TaterTot … the good old house with creaky floors, heavy paint on the windowsills, that big fireplace. You get to sleep in Grandma’s soft old bed, and eat pumpkin pie to your little heart’s content.

There’s a catch: You have to give up everything you’ve seen and felt, learned and earned since then. All the exploration and experience of all the years between – it never happened. Everyone you think you’ve met, you never met, never loved, never will. You will trapped in that beautiful time. Is it worth it? Would you do it?

Ponder that while the tryptophane wears off.

Peppermint Patty had to acquiesce, accept life on life’s terms – change as the only constant – that old saw. Wouldn’t you?