Guest columnist: Making room at the table

Thanksgiving is a time of celebrating abundance, a lesson I learned well at my parent’s table. If there was not enough room at the Thanksgiving table at my childhood home, we’d just add another table. Mealtime at the children’s home where my family worked and lived often included folks beyond our biological family, and Thanksgiving was no exception. Ours was a welcoming home, and the tables were frequently full. It is a way of being in the world that stuck with me and shaped how I approach my work as chaplain at Warren Wilson College.

Every year, a parade went through my hometown. I loved the dance teams, marching bands and fancy cars filled with waving city officials. At 13, my parents let me walk two miles to see the parade downtown with Otis, one of the boys who lived at the children’s home.

I remember the freedom of making the trek without supervision, and the crowd’s subdued and sweet temperament set the scene as I cheered for the parade to start. But Otis was noticeably bored. “You need to see the other parade,” he said.

We followed the parade route, passed the post office and crossed an invisible color line along the way. No one had ever explicitly told me about the boundary, but it existed. I was stepping into the east side of town, and I quickly realized that I was the only white kid among the crowds lining the streets. Otis walked taller as he entered a space familiar to him.

The “other” parade Otis mentioned was, in fact, the same parade. I quickly realized that the predominantly African-American step teams and dance troupes I enjoyed on the west side were warming up for their east side performances. The drum teams were louder here, the cheering almost deafening as the sidewalks came to life with dancing spectators. Otis smiled when I joined in.

That Thanksgiving was, perhaps, the first time I registered the cultural differences that made up our community. I also realized that my friend Otis was constantly expected to navigate my side of town while I had managed to go my whole life without knowing his. I was confused, excited and, ultimately, grateful for the experience.

My 13-year-old worldview expanded along that parade route, and it continues to expand daily in my work as chaplain and director of spiritual life at Warren Wilson College. I work alongside students and fellow educators who are carrying experiences that are sometimes similar and sometimes quite different from my own. They have seen parades I never knew existed, and their stories shape and change me.

Each year my partner and I invite a group of Warren Wilson students, who, for various reasons, are not making the trip home, to join us. Like the Thanksgivings of my childhood, when there isn’t enough room at the table, we just add another table. Our parade this year will consist of a march to the sofa, where we will pile in to tell stories and laugh with “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” serving as the soundtrack. It’s not the parade of my youth, but my thoughts will return to Otis as invisible lines become the mortar connecting this group — a gathering of friends in a world bent on scarcity and division encountering hope and abundance in a collective act of Thanksgiving.

May the parades that march through your lives be as rich and wonderful.

Ammons is chaplain and director of spiritual life at Warren Wilson College.