It was also something new for Jennifer and the rest of the contingent from Mississippi and Chicago. With the exception of Jennifer as a child, none had been to a big family gathering before. Due to being from small families or religious and financial considerations and sometimes the challenges of life, they had been to small holiday observances or none at all.

I was triply thankful this Thanksgiving. First it was so wonderful to have Jennifer come up for the holiday and to spend it with her and her entourage. It made me so happy to see Jennifer especially enjoy the occasion. Second, it reinforced an appreciation that I have for the large, Catholic family I was raised in. We didn’t have far to go have a sense of community. And third, I am grateful for the bounty that I have received, a bounty I didn’t necessarily deserve or earned, but still a bounty I have received. The “normal” that I grew up with wasn’t necessarily the normal that the rest of society experienced.

From there, Jennifer, her children and Andrew and I headed up to Madison. We spent part of Friday touring Madison. We drove around South Madison so that Jennifer’s kids could see where their mom grew up. And it brought a lot of reminiscing by Jennifer and Andrew about their childhood. They talked about all of the places they explored riding their bikes. It made me start to worry all over again.

And of course when Jennifer moved to Jackson in the mid-1990s, there were no Urban League buildings, no Centro Hispano Calli, no Access Healthcare and no Goodman South Campus for Madison College. Back when Jennifer’s mom and I got married in 1979, we lived halfway up on Badger Road from Park Street. There was no Center for Black Excellence and Culture being built. There was no Fountain of Life Church. There was only the Calvary Methodist Church and its parsonage. And there was an Eagle Grocery Store on the corner of Park and Badger where the bus transfer point is now. A lot had changed in South Madison.

And then we drove around Madison. Red Caboose Day Care where Jennifer went during her pre-school years had been torn down recently. And none of the “towering” residential/commercial buildings were there on E. Washington Ave. Back then, E. Wash was where all of the car dealerships were located.

And of course, the University of Wisconsin had undergone significant change with the Music Hall being built and new buildings going up around Park Street. The UW Hospital and Clinics area had undergone a lot of change with the School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences buildings plus the American Family Children’s Hospital having been built since Jennifer left.

Fortunately, there were some places that hadn’t changed. After Badger Road, we moved to the graduate student family housing area Eagle Heights. After we drove up the hill leading to Eagle Heights, the community gardens dotted the fields to the right. We had tried to maintain a garden during my graduate school years, we ended up sharing the bounty with some of the wild critters who lived in the area. And then, we saw 805 D Eagle Heights where we moved to and Andrew was born. All throughout the ride, Jennifer and Andrew reminisced and reminded each other about their childhoods.

We ended our Madison tour on Churchill Drive near Arbor Hills where we lived for several years. Churchill Drive has to be one of the longest uninterrupted blacks in Madison. It was perfect for young children with a greenway abutting their backyard and on Halloween, one could fill their bag with treats without having to leave the block they lived on.

Due to the pending winter weather and the dire predictions from the forecasters, Jennifer and her children left for Mississippi at 5 a.m. the next morning. They had rented a car and were driving then round-trip. Fortunately, Alexus, Jennifer’s daughter, is a driver as well. Jennifer texted me several times during the trip to let me know they were okay and they arrived safely home in Jackson around 9:30 that night.

It reminded me of my days in the 1980s and early 1990s when I would take a long weekend from the Urban League and head for Jackson with Jennifer and Andrew in tow. We would leave on Friday morning and I would be back in Madison by Sunday night. They would spend two weeks with the Ransom side of the family and then I would complete the trip in reverse to bring them back home. I was very willing to do that because I knew it was important for the kids to remain a part of their Jackson relatives lives as well. And I have to admit, it also kept me connected to my Mississippi life as well.

It was such a wonderful homecoming event, reminding me that I had a personal life beyond all of the newspaper, nonprofit accounting and volunteer work that I do. It was a moment in time that I will always appreciate and never forget.