A brief tribute to the end of a Heidkamp institution

Missing Thanksgiving in Chicagoland was not something to be taken lightly this year. November 22, 2007 market the end of an institution - the Emil N. Heidkamp Senior Family Thanksgiving.

The first time I ever sat around a single table for a Thanksgiving meal was about two or three years ago when I was living on the East Coast and joined a friend's family for their celebration. Before then all I knew of Thanksgiving was a church basement in the northwest Chicago suburbs filled with at least a dozen tables and 50-100 Heidkamps. depending on the year.

It wasn't just aunts, uncles and cousins (of which there are plenty- my Dad is one of 12 kids), but great aunts, great uncles and second cousins. It wasn't just one turkey - it was two or three. It wasn't football - it was my great uncles Dick and Don reciting the Cremation of Sam McGee. It was poker at one table and Trivial Pursuit at another. It was balancing spoons on your nose. It was being one of the only kids in the room who couldn't say the Hail Mary. It was lots and lots and lots of noise.

A few years ago one of my best friends from high school was at a church event when she heard another woman describing her family's plans for Thanksgiving: subterranean gathering in a a Catholic church, two twin great uncles who used to be priests and then married nuns reciting poetry. My friend had to ask. The woman was my cousin Nicole.

My parents said almost 120 people showed up this year to mark the end of an era. I'm really disappointed I couldn't make it 121.