Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear, but not that thing.

Thanksgiving without tension is like a Thanksgiving without turkey. It can be done, but it is not the norm.

For some Chicago expats, food is the medicine that blunts the pain of separation.

The Thanksgiving meal should not be treated as a grad school exam or an Olympic dive. Whatever you cook will be good enough - unless you make that Twinkie turkey stuffing we're suddenly hearing too much about.

In twenty years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

The soul-sucking activity of TV-watching feels better when it is done with other souls.