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A roundup of news on sporting events, people and places in Southeast Michigan by columnist Jim Evans.

Monday, November 17, 2014

The circle of life with turkey and stuffing

First you have kids.
Then the pages of the calendar start to whirl and eventually your kids have kids.
You are grandparents. Those are your grandkids.
The circle of life. It’s not just a song from Disney’s “Lion King.”
I was raking a lot of leaves in the fall of 2009.
There was a nagging ache in my chest, but I knew it wasn’t a heart problem.
I ignored it for as long as I could before my wife, Kim, convinced me to go to the hospital.
A whole bunch of tests later, the doctors discovered a tumor.
It was kidney cancer but apparently of the restless variety. It had spread to my bones. Shortly thereafter, they found it in my brain and a lung.
I figured I was a goner. Goodbye George Thorogood, hello Taps. So long, Kid Rock. Hello, How Great Thou Art.
Tears were shed and I thought about stuff that I would be missing.
Five years and three grandkids later, I haven’t missed a thing.
I feel great, thanks to a lot of kneeling on Sunday mornings; a saint of a wife; and some absolute heaven-sent docs from the Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University.
This past Monday morning, our third grandchild was added to the family roster. Emerson Rye Holloway busted onto the Christmas list sometime around 8.
Emerson is the second child of our oldest daughter, Brittany, and her husband, Chris. She was beaten to the dinner table by their son, Julian, who is nearly 2 ½ years old.
Kyle, our oldest son, has a daughter, Josie. She is about a year older than Julian.
The circle of life. Hello to Simba, Timon, Pumbaa and the grandkids. I did not think I would be around to see the birth of one grandchild, much less three.
We all will be gathering at my moms’s house once again for Thanksgiving. Mom has eight grandkids and eight great grandkids. She is coming off a busted hip sustained in a fall back in April and if you had taken bets early on during her recovery if she’d be toting 20-pound turkeys around ever again, the odds would have been Jimmy the Greek woeful.
Mom might be in her mid 80s, but she is determined. She has more guts than the rest of the family combined. Me, if I had fractured a hip, I would have been happy spending Thanksgiving eating a Banquet turkey pot pie in a reclining chair watching the Lions on television.
Please pass those tater tots.
Not mom. She’s doing the turkey. She is doing the mashed potatoes. She is doing her sweet potatoes.
We will say grace before we eat. We will miss the lost some family members. We will welcome those we have gained, too.
The circle of life, you know.
Emerson is still too young for most of the food. Maybe she can gum the Jello with mandarin oranges.
Pass the gravy please. The turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing, too. I’ll put the pumpkin pie on hold. For a maxiumum of 45 minutes or so.
My oncologist said that is fine. The cardiologist would probably have a different opinion.