I’m getting a jump on the calendar with this Thanksgiving photo from November 2010. Then when next Thursday rolls around, I can concentrate on cooking and eating instead of having to look for a TBT photo.

This was our first Thanksgiving after my dad passed away. It was taken in our kitchen in Kaaawa. Bonnie and my mother were driving out from Kahala and would be arriving soon, or perhaps were already there when the turkey came out of the oven.

My parents always enjoyed visiting us in Kaaawa, although I recall that my mother was always ambivalent about our living out there. It meant that we could afford a house in a good neighborhood and a beautiful setting. But it meant that we were in Kaaawa. When we first announced that we were buying a house in Kaaawa, she thought that it would be something like the old beach houses that she and her friends rented when they were young.

When she saw the first photos, her comment was: “Oh, it’s a Honolulu house,” her voice drawing out the word “Honolulu”. In her mind, it meant it was a house to live in, not to just visit from time to time, and that we would be moving from our apartment just a few minutes from my parents house, to a new home in the “country” an hour drive away. Even if we visited just as often as when we lived nearby, she was now conscious of that we were moving away. She never complained, but you could feel her ambivalence.