by Beth Dolinar, Contributing Writer
Soon it will be Thanksgiving Day, a time of family and pumpkin pie, football games and the warm smells of turkey filling the home.
For me there will be something even more evocative—a strange and deeply-rooted proclivity I’ve never known to afflict any other human being. The Thanksgiving Day parades will appear on TV, and has been the tradition since I was a small child, I will cry.
I will cry as the Rocketts appear in their Santa costumes; I will weep as the Snoopy balloon floats above the crowds. And as the marching bands high-step their way past the Macys building, all those trombones and tubas playing in unison will hit my hippocampus with such emotional verve that I will have to leave the room and return to the kitchen because, well, that stuffing is not going to cook itself.
This has been a problem of mine for decades, and it’s not limited to Thanksgiving parades on television. I have been known to cry watching halftime shows that feature marching bands, and I once made the mistake of clicking on a YouTube video of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo proceeding into an arena, its hundreds of bagpipes blasting away. By the end I was sobbing and snorting so hard I was in danger of inhaling my top lip.
So what’s this about, I’ve asked myself? The only thing Google could come up with was nostalgia, and maybe that is why I cry.
My dear dad was a school band director. My earliest memories of him at work involved standing with my mother and two sisters along a parade route as his high school band marched by. There, toward the back, would be my dad, walking along. He’s always been tall and handsome, and in his navy blue suit and his head high, I saw my hero there on the street. Add the loud music, the sunlight bouncing off the brass tubas, the crowd cheering and you have a moment bursting with my pride.
It’s a smart evolutionary trick that made a little place in the brain where memory and emotion sit together. The parades of my earliest years carved a place there, and it doesn’t take much to shake the tears loose. When my daughter graduated from college, the commencement procession into the arena brought tears. Yes, they were about pride in her accomplishment, but I think it was also the marching and the music.
Early in my career as a TV news reporter, I went to Washington, D.C. to cover a presidential inauguration. I was set up for a live report along the parade route for the noon news. Just as I was about to begin my report, a band marched down the street behind me. As I sputtered and choked to regain my composure, my cameraman poked his head from around the tripod and asked if I was OK.
I waved him off, and kept talking. That’s a close as I ever came to losing it while live on the air. And all because of a marching band.
I suppose we all have memories that inspire tears, or happiness or sadness. It’s been said that smell has the closest connection to memory, because the brain’s olfactory and memory centers sit next to each other. I know that come Thanksgiving morning, the smells of turkey and gravy will bring happy memories.
And then I’ll turn on the TV. With my apron tied around me and a wooden spoon in hand, I’ll sit for a few minutes and watch the parade going by, and my tears will flow—tears of pride? Tears of nostalgia?
Maybe both. Good tears, though.
***
About the author: Beth Dolinar is a writer, Emmy-award winning producer, and public speaker. She writes a popular column for the Washington “Observer-Reporter.” She is a contributing producer of documentary length programming for WQED-TV on a wide range of topics. Beth has a son and a daughter. She is an avid yoga devotee, cyclist and reader. Beth says she types like lightning but reads slowly — because she likes a really good sentence.
