[02:27.11]They struggle past check-in counters and wrestle their gear into stuffed overhead bins.
[02:33.98]They migrate back on airlines whose owners pray with their overbooked hearts that the weather will hold.
[02:41.77]8 (2)It is a testimony to the joyful pull of family that Americans saturated the air and highways this week
[02:49.97]to return to the place they no longer live but nevertheless call home. To get home for the holidays.
[02:58.57]9 Yet my old friend has touched,however delicately,on that other truth about a country
[03:05.54]scattered over generations and geography.We have gone from family life as everyday,from knowing every sock
[03:15.15]in our children's drawers and every frown on their faces, to welcoming them home to designated guest rooms.
[03:24.01]10 We have visitation rights in each other's lives now, say my friend, a mother in 617
[03:31.45]who looks forward to greeting the children from 415 and 011. We keep in touch, we catch up,
[03:40.68]we say hellos and goodbyes.
[03:43.42]But we are still trying to learn how to compress "quality time" into small quantities.
[03:50.55]11 My friend is not complaining. Neither of us longs to return to those wonderful yesterdays.
[03:58.28]The nests that once felt empty now feel roomy.
[04:03.06]12 More to the point we raised our children to look over the horizons. We told them, the world is yours,
[04:11.29]go for it. One by one, they went for it, to 305 and 215 and 406. It is, after all, the American way.
[04:24.61]13 So we email and travel and are grateful at how much easier it is to keep in touch
[04:31.77]--at least virtual touch--today than when our parents were young.
[04:37.70]We take joy in the “kids” creating their own lives.
[04:42.53]14 Yet at times an unpatriotic thought crosses our minds. Is this American way, this long-distance family,
[04:53.30]an odd tradition as unique to our people as Thanksgiving?
[04:59.25]15 We are a nation of movers, founded by people on pilgrimages, populated by those
[05:07.19]who were willfully or forcibly uprooted. Our national mythology is based on the lure of kicking out and starting fresh.
[05:17.72](3)We moved west and west again on a promise of the last best place, which turned out to be just a way station.
[05:26.42]16 Even Robert Frost’s most familiar and most American definition--"home is the place where,
[05:34.67]when you have to go there, they have to take you in"--has another subtext, Home is not where you stay.
[05:43.84]17 From the middle of the age spectrum, my friend and I have seen elders move from house to condo,
[05:51.13]north to south, aging sunbirds still migrating. On the other side of the generational sandwich
[06:00.38]we watch our children's words. They are "coming home" on Tuesday and  "going back home" on Sunday.
[06:10.10]18 Today many Americans find it hard to answer the question "Where are you from?" Do we all hold dual citizenship?
[06:20.31]Does the national concern about weaker family ties say less about our feelings than about our geography?
[06:29.14]19 There questions hang lightly in the November air as we turn the subject
[06:34.91]from comings and goings of children to the advantages and disadvantages of chestnuts in the stuffing.
[06:43.04]This is the time, after all, of celebrating reunion, not musings about separation.
[06:51.06]20 ?°The kids?± are coming home.It is not the scarcity of food that brings us back to this full table.
[06:59.57]It is each other. And somewhere between the turkey and pies we settle down to savor togetherness.
[07:08.69]21 (4)Over this Thanksgiving holiday and in this restless country, we stop and feast on family.
[07:13.74]双重的　　　　　优点　　　　　　定居　　　　　　一直在动的
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