Almost Heaven (As Usual, Again)

"Why do we sing about West Virginia, Dad?"

Kid Two cheesing with his Aunt Cat

This is the question Kid One (now six, and on their sixth Mollmann Thanksgiving) asked me Friday night after the traditional Mollmann hot dog roast. I explained that the Mollmanns have been congregating in state parks for Thanksgiving for over fifty years now, and that in those old days, when it was just my grandparents and their five children, they used to go to Pipestem State Park in West Virginia. So even though we haven't gone to West Virginia since 2008 (too far for my grandmother these days), we still sing John Denver's "Country Roads." It is nothing to be proud of, but what (most of) the Mollmanns lack in musical aptitude, (some of) the Mollmanns make up for with enthusiasm... though for some reason the lyrics of the second verse continue to evade many of us. I recorded it this year, out of a sort of morbid curiosity, but I haven't yet had the courage to listen back to it.

These traditions are important, of course, they keep us who we are. Every Thanksgiving the Mollmanns congregate in a state park, we eat chili for dinner Thursday, we go hiking during the days. My own little unit of the Mollmanns has acquired its own traditions, too; I have to teach  the week of Thanskgiving but my wife doesn't, so my wife and kids fly out Saturday and spend some time with my wife's family, while I don't join them until Tuesday. It's more work for her, of course, but I think she really appreciates getting to spend that extended quality time with her mother, and the kids get a lot out of it, too.

Kid One tastes their first(ish) snowfall

Kid One can be resistant to changes in routine—I feel like last year they were particularly anti-hiking—but now I think we've done it enough that the kids recognize the annual routine themselves, and thus come to find it comforting as well. They were both enthusiastic, engaged hikers this year. I would say it was an above-average Thanksgiving for them. The last couple years, we've stayed in three or four medium-sized lodges, this year we stayed in two big ones. This meant that my immediate family stayed with a couple others, and thus my kids got to spend more time with my cousins' kids of similar ages, which was quite nice. Kid One declared another cousin their friend once they spent some time listening to Kid One's Yoto together (but could not, of course, remember her name), while Kid Two kept bossing around another kid who was two years older than him!

Most excitingly, they got to experience a snowfall! As Florida babies, their experiences with snow have been few and far between. It did snow when we were in Cleveland for Christmas in (I believe) 2021, but neither of them remember this, so it was very exciting, even though by Ohio standards we're talking a light dusting. "Is it Christmas?" Kid Two asked my wife. No, not yet, buddy.

After I explained the origins of Mollmann Thanksgiving, Kid One declared we ought to back to West Virginia. I don't know that the Mollmann clan can make this happen, probably the logistics are too complicated when Mollmann Thanksgiving has something like fifty total attendees. But tradition is important, and if I ever get the opportunity, I'd like to take my family back to where it all began, back to what they claim is "almost heaven."

Thanksgiving: Almost Heaven

I wanted to write up something for the day after Thanksgiving itself, but we were in the Ohio wilderness without wifi, so that wan't an option. Thus, you get this too-late post instead.

The Mollmanns once again converged on a state park for their Thanksgiving festivities. Next year will be the fiftieth anniversary, so it's quite the tradition at this point. This year, fifty-one Mollmanns were in attendance across the four days (though I think peak attendance at any one time was forty-eight), with just four not present! Apparently no one keeps track of such things, but it surely must be a record, since there never were enough Mollmanns for so many to be there before. This includes my grandmother, her children and their spouses, their children and their spouses, and their children. Four generations. There were eighteen of the nineteen great-grandchildren!

We stayed in a cabin with my immediate family; the Mollmann Clan as a whole occupied six different cabins, each with three or four or more bedrooms, I believe. We did the usual: some small hikes, three-ways for dinner, a hot dog roast, and the recitation of "Country Roads." I was glad to spend some time with my family; our kids had a blast. Son One always complains about hikes but usually ends up being pretty keen once actually underway; he and Uncle Andy did some good rock-climbing and exploring. Son Two was the littlest Mollmann who completed the hikes under his own power for most of the way. (He did have some help from Aunt Cat, though.)

We didn't manage to snag a photo of our own family; things somehow always seemed to be going on. Getting there was an adventure—for Hayley. Because I had to teach Monday, but she didn't, and because she wanted to see her mother, who lives in the same general area as Mollmann Thanksgiving, she flew out with the kids Saturday by herself, while I flew in Tuesday. But things seemed to go fine for her. Getting home was a bit of an adventure, when our connecting flight was delayed a bit, and we didn't even take off until 10:15pm, well past the kids' usual bed time. But we did make it, and they fell asleep about ten seconds into the car ride home, and thankfully even slept in Sunday.

Things were a bit of a mess before the trip. The dishwasher and the dryer had both been broken, and we still haven't quite got back on track from the disarray created by packing in such an environment. It is now, of course, the end of the semester, the worst time to do anything.

Yet I am always glad of these trips, and they always make me wistful for home and family. "Take me home... to the place... I BELONG!"

Almost Heaven

(I am shocked to learn I've never used this as a post title!)

As longtime followers of my life know, my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and it's my favorite because of the longtime tradition of the Mollmanns: convening in a state park for the week of Thanksgiving, where we go on "forced marches" (hikes), eat Cincinnati chili, and have a hot-dog roast. This has grown from seven Mollmanns in 1973 to I think around fifty now, as it's gone from my grandparents and their five kids to incorporating four generations. I have thirteen cousins, almost all of whom are married now, and almost all of the married cousins have kids.

I'd have to verify the records, but I think this is just the second time since 1973 Mollmann Thanksgiving hasn't happened. (My recollection is that sometime in the late 1980s, when basically everyone in the family had a newborn at home, it was skipped.) Just another thing to thank the COVID-19 pandemic for.

But even if it was being held, I wouldn't be there. As my facebook followers-- but not, I think, my blog readers-- will know, Hayley is pregnant, and the baby is due in late December, putting any long trips out of the question.

Hayley had a good idea, though, which was that we could do our own Thanksgiving, visiting a Florida state park. When I looked into it, cabins were all booked up, but we ended up finding an Airbnb near the Croom Wildlife Management Area, a tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest, and we spent Wednesday through Friday there. About an hour away from Tampa, it was close enough that if Hayley went into labor, we would be able to make it to the hospital without issues.

We visited a couple different places in the area. We walked a little bit around the Dade Battlefield Historic State Park; we attempted a four-mile loop hike that would take us past the Withlacoochee River; two different times we attempted a short hike along the Withlacoochee River, but the first time we set off on the wrong trail, and the second time we mostly did it right, but went the wrong way for at least part of it. We learned (but should have known) that Little Buddy has his limits when it comes to forced marches. We probably made it through a mile of the four-mile loop: he was having fun at first, but then just obstinately refused to move. Unfortunately neither of us had thought to pack our baby carrier (I don't think we've used it for anything since last Thanksgiving), so we had to carry him out! Even the short hikes were a bit much for him.

Still, he clearly had fun. He got to pick up sticks and see trees and he made the connection that were were in a forest, just Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (one of his favorite books right now). It made us realize that even in these pandemic-fused times, we could be hiking more in the area where we live!

The traditional Mollmann hot dog roast is Friday night, but since we were just going to be gone two nights, we did ours Wednesday evening. I made a fire (then Hayley remade it better); LB has experienced a campfire before, but he was too little to really get it at the time. We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores and sat out under the dark sky by the light of the flames. The next day, we did the traditional Mollmann chili (Hayley had made it in a crockpot a couple days before we left) and a pumpkin pie (that Hayley and LB made).

Sitting outside under the sky, it was nice to be out of the home, and it was nice to be away from responsibilities for a couple days. The monotony of life in this pandemic has been one of its worst features, and this has been exacerbated by the responsibilities of parenting and home ownership; I feel like we spend all our time at home lesson planning, grading, and trying to stop the house from becoming a total disaster. For a moment (before it gets really hectic later this month) we could step outside that and just be a family. It was a weird feeling, actually, knowing that this configuration of my life is coming to an end. LB has recently figured out the concept of family, and will sometimes when there's the three of us, he'll go, "Momma. Dadda. [Little Buddy]. Family!" He gets very excited when all three of us do something together. But as is so often true of life, no sooner does he figure it out than it will all change. (For the better, but changes are different nonetheless.)

In the morning we did a Zoom call with my immediate family; that night, we did a Zoom call with all the Mollmanns where we sang "Country Roads." Probably nothing so wretched has ever been heard. LB really enjoyed practicing "Country Roads," and continued to run around randomly going "Country Roads!" the next couple days.

and I thought Zoom faculty discussions were chaotic

 
I was happy to see my family even in this weird, chaotic way, and also happy to see the facebook posts roll in over the next couple days documenting how everyone handled things. My parents went to their lakehouse with my grandmother; one of my uncles and aunts were joined by four of their kids (and three spouses, and five of their grandkids) at an outdoor, socially distanced hike and eating of chili; another of my uncles and aunts went to a state park with their nieces and nephews (with whom they have formed a "double bubble"); my sister went to a co-worker's and had turkey but did chili the next day; and so on.

As I've discussed here before, the lack of the marking of time is one of the big mental drains of this pandemic. Days slide into the next without meaning. Tradition is one of those ways we mark time, and I was heartened that these traditions aren't just important to me, but to all the Mollmanns, all of whom figured out a way to celebrate in their own fashion. The pandemic (and pregnancy) make keep us all apart, but we can still celebrate together regardless.

Thanksgiving No-Ways with My Cousins

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Thanksgiving-- it is my favorite holiday. Significantly, this is because of how I celebrate it every year; the Mollmann family going up through my grandparents' generation always rents a large lodge or several cabins adjacent to a state park somewhere for Wednesday through Saturday or Sunday. These days, as my cousins marry off and reproduce, that's rather a lot of people.

Before we even got engaged, I told Hayley that we were always doing Thanksgiving with my family; that was my one nonnegotiable condition for marriage. Since when we were both at UConn we got a whole week off for Thanksgiving, we usually did something like the Saturday through Tuesday before Thanksgiving with her families in Cleveland, and then headed down to join mine for the actual day itself. Well, negotiation happened anyway, and back in 2014 we actually did Thanksgiving dinner with her families in Cleveland, booking it down to Hocking Hills Thanksgiving night to at least spend Friday through Sunday with my family.

photo by me

This year, circumstances created another compromise. Her little brother is a member of Ohio University's Marching 110, and this year they were invited to march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Now the parade is not something I've ever particularly cared about, but getting to see my wife's brother in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity trumped even my nonnegotiables.

It was a hectic couple days. We flew in and out of Newark on a budget airline; Hayley's dad and family were staying in Brooklyn in the apartment of one of Hayley's cousins (out of town for Thanksgiving himself-- thanks Luis!). All in all, we left home at 5:30am and made it to the apartment at 2:30pm after driving an hour to Orlando, taking a parking shuttle, making the actual flight, riding the airport train, riding a New Jersey Transit train, and taking the subway. We were up early the next day, too: the parade itself starts at 9am, but you have to get to the parade route early to secure a good spot.

photo by Hayley

We awoke at 5am and got to the route around 6:30am, and the front row was already filled up along the entire route. We ended up settling in behind an older man and his adult daughter who had laid out some towels to claim a stretch of sidewalk for the rest of their family who were coming later. Our theory was that since they would be sitting on the towels, we would have a pretty good view of the parade over them.

It was a long and cold wait for the parade to start. It has been a long time since all I had to do was stand in one place and wait for something to happen. It was in the high thirties; coming straight to this from November in Florida was a particular shock. Hayley's other brother went and got me a coffee and her a hot chocolate mostly so he could go to the bathroom; I really needed that coffee but was terrified it would make me need to go to the bathroom. (Amazingly, I was fine.)

When the rest of the family in front of us finally turned up, it turned out they didn't need as much space as they had claimed, so they pulled up one of their towels and invited us into the vacated area. So getting there at 6:30am actually paid off!

photo by Hayley's older brother

I hadn't really known what to expect, since I've never paid the parade much attention, but basically it rotates between the big balloons (mostly, but not all, of licensed characters), elaborate floats with celebrities atop them (I didn't know very many of them, but I did know a few, including celebrity chef/Enterprise guest actress/Salman Rushdie's ex-wife Padma Lakshmi, and pop stars Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Holt), clowns dressed up (usually in a way that co-ordinates with a float), and a number of marching bands (mostly high school, actually, but in addition to OU, there was also Prairie View A&M, as well as the Air Force Marching Band).

It actually was really fun. The floats were impressive, though I don't get why they bring in a bunch of celebrities, mostly singers, who don't do any actual singing. The clowns were entertaining, and the balloons really are cool to see in person. The marching bands were all really good. There was a tremendous energy to the whole thing-- the clowns threw confetti!-- and I loved shouting and chanting at the floats and balloons. It was cold, but the skies were clear; you couldn't have asked for a nicer day, to be honest.

This was followed up later by a Thanksgiving dinner cruise for the Marching 110 and family, which was itself gorgeous:

photo by Hayley

Friday and Saturday morning we spent sightseeing; Friday with Hayley's family, and Saturday on our own after they left. The Grand Central Station Holiday Train Display was massively disappointing compared to the Union Terminal one in Cincinnati, but Central Park is always cool, and I particularly enjoyed seeing the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Cool plants, cool layout, and I enjoyed noting a few significant-to-me Brooklynites immortalized on the path of Brooklyn greats:

photos by me

So, in the end, I had an enjoyable trip, but I feel like I would never do it again. It's hard to imagine that this experience of it could be topped. And missing getting to spend time with the Mollmanns has been tougher and weirder than I imagined. But I am really happy I got to do it. Thanks to Hayley's dad and family for the opportunity, and for everything you provided during the trip!

Bonus Unexpected Victorian Literature Reference

photo by me
it's a rose in the Cranford(!) Rose Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Celebrating Thanksgiving through Statistical Analysis

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving yesterday, if you're American. As you may have noticed, I took the day off blogging. (Well, sort of, as I write these things anywhere between a day and six months in advance! Today's is being written on Tuesday, for your information. The picture below I edited in on Thursday night, though.)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and members of my family celebrate Thanksgiving not by eating turkey, but through three-way Cincinnati chili, a dish of mystical significance for people from my city-- though I'm not aware of anyone from my city who goes this far in their devotion to the dish.

This is actually a four-way, though: note the onions.

My love of Thanksgiving and my amateur interest in statistics meant that I was of course positioned to be deeply enthusiastic about a recent article on Nate Silver's website FiveThirtyEight, "Here's What Your Part Of America Eats On Thanksgiving." I was sorry to have missed the original poll where they collected the data, however, as none of the survey's 1,058 respondents reported eating chili, as I discovered when I downloaded the source data from GitHub: I was surprised that only 82% of respondents reported eating turkey, but most of the non-turkeyers do stuff like ham (though some eat lasagna, and many are vegetarians, hence, no turkey).

The real interesting discovery is the proliferation of side dishes; despite living in New England for seven years now, I've never eaten Thanksgiving here, and thus had no idea that 56% of New Englanders have squash as a side dish (compared to the natural average of 18%). The Middle Atlantic (my home region) disproportionately prefers biscuits and rolls; it's never occurred to me that you wouldn't have biscuits and rolls with a traditional American-style Thanksgiving dinner.

The other thing I read recently was this analysis of U.S. holiday travel, from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, prompted by my wife and I wondering if it really was true that the day before Thanksgiving was the busiest travel day of the year. It turns out that the answer is no; this is only true for air travel: "Thanksgiving Day is a more heavily traveled day then [sic] Wednesday. Among those traveling more than 100 miles, travel is evenly spread throughout the Wednesday-Sunday period, with no statistically significant difference among the traffic flows during those five days."

There's lot of other fascinating data in there about Thanksgiving travel. This year we're travelling around 700 miles, well above the national average of 214! So I guess I am 3¼ times as devoted to Thanksgiving as the rest of you. (My kid sister, however, is 3¼ times as devoted to Thanksgiving as I am!)

Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving; even though I am writing this on Tuesday, I know I did!