Over the river and thru the woods……to Grandmother’s house we go………….I dreamed about Thanksgiving last night. It was all my thanksgiving memories surfaced from the recesses of my brain and combined together to form a video montage of Thanksgivings long ago and not so long ago.
My earliest Thanksgiving memories involve going to my Granny’s house in Wills Point Texas. Usually we would go the night before so that my mom could help. I loved that night before, sitting in the kitchen watching my mom and my granny make pies and wrestle a turkey and cut up celery and peel potatoes. I don’t remember being allowed to actually help except for one vague memory of myself placing the vanilla wafers just so around the edge of the banana pudding bowl and the slices of banana on the top. No one made banana pudding like my granny. Or sweet potato pies though my mom and my co-worker Jack are certainly up there with her in the Sweet Potato pie-maker hall of fame. The next day the relatives would begin arriving and the cousins and would all set out on an adventure exploring the neighborhood. We would cross the highway she lived on carefully and place pennies on the railroad track and wait for a train to go by. Then we would make our way back across to search for the flattened pennies. I still have one in a box of keepsakes from my childhood. Granny had a fence around her place, one of those that had a 2 by 4 as the top rail. We would pretend it was a tightrope and we would see who could walk it while without losing our balance as the cousins would throw peaches and whatever sticks they could find on the ground at the fence walker trying to make them lose their balance. We would go to the schoolyard down the road and get on one of the yellow buses and pretend we were going on a trip somewhere. We would walk to the corner store and buy a chocolate soldier drink for a dime. And eventually, we would all be called in to Thanksgiving dinner where one of the men would give a prayer of thanksgiving and the eating began. After wards, the women would clean up the mess, throw a table cloth over the table food of food and the men would turn on a football game and eventually be dozing before the tv. Ahhhhh, those were the days. At some point, someone would say they were hungry and off the linen tablecloth would come from the food and round 2 of eating would ensue. Then we would all pile into the car for the drive home to Mesquite, TX , full bellies, full hearts and thankful for the time we had spent with our family.
My grandmother died when I was 13 and we moved to Oklahoma shortly thereafter. That would mark the end of the extended family get-togethers. The next few years it was just our family of 7. No cousins, no aunts and uncles and no grandparents. My mom would prepare the Thanksgiving dinner after that year and she kept the same dishes that we had always had. The banana pudding eventually went by the wayside as Pecan Pie and Chocolate Cream pie took their place. And even though I was the only one in the family that really liked Sweet Potato pie, she still made me one, every year, just for me…until the Thanksgiving before she died when she was much too sick to cook. That Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks before she died was the saddest one I can remember. When it came time to go to my brothers where we arranged to have Thanksgiving that year, I remember her saying to my dad that she simply couldn’t go..she was too weak and she wanted us to go on without her. I’ll be fine here , she said. And she would’ve been. But we wouldn’t have been. With a little encouragement we got her to agree to go and I remember her face even now, sitting on the couch at Garry’s house, watching her kids and grandkids mill about and the saddest expression on her face you can imagine. I know she was thinking about it being her last Thanksgiving. There was no sweet potato pie that year. Or in the years to come. For me it marked the end of an era. It wasn’t about the pie. It was about the loss of the pie maker. How I wished that I had taken the time to have her teach me how to make one. My boys were with me that Thanksgiving though by rights it had been Mike’s year to have them. Knowing that it would likely be the last they had with Mema, he had generously agreed to skip his turn. I am grateful to this day for that . Somehow, I don’t think I would have been able to bear that day without having my own children with me as I realized that my mom would soon be gone.
All those Thanksgivings in between the last one at my granny’s and the last year with my mom blur into one as those 2 take on a more profound meaning. About change, about loss, about traditions and about memories that are so precious, tears roll down my cheeks as I type this blog.
My mom would attempt every year to get us all to sit at the table. It never happened. Everyone would fill their plate after the blessing was said and then sit wherever the mood struck them. There would be people in the kitchen at that small table, people at the dining room table, people in the living room balancing their plate of food as they watched whatever football game happened to be on the television. I can’t remember seeing my mom ever sit down and eat a plate of food. She would claim to be full from sampling all morning. She would hold the babies when there were babies, or she would be sitting with a toddler encouraging them to eat, or she would be talking to a guest that someone had brought with them. And what I remember most is that she would absolutely GLOW with the joy of having all her family in one place. For that was what she loved most in the world and what she was the most thankful for. As we grew up and married and had other in-laws to consider, the tradition of Thanksgiving only changed once to accommodate that. We had Thanksgiving one year on a Friday after. She assumed everyone would be sick of turkey so instead of Turkey we had spaghetti. I still remember the stunned shock everyone experienced when they arrived not to the smell of sage and turkey and pies baking but to garlic bread and spaghetti sauce. In the years that followed, it mattered not who could be there and who could not. The turkey was back and whoever could be there, was. Without my dad’s yearly pronouncement of there being “too much sage Betty” in reference to the stuffing, without the sight of him carving the turkey like a maniac, slicing off a piece and slapping it onto the tray as we watched and giggled at his lack of patience it simply wasn’t Thanksgiving.
After my mom died, the family sort of split up when it came to Thanksgiving. Some went to Garry’s house, some went to in-laws homes, and some didn’t do anything at all. Thanksgiving for me came only every other year in a sence, the years that Chris and Andy were “mine” for Thanksgiving. Usually those years we would make the trek to Kingfisher to go to my brother’s house. Somehow, Thanksgiving for just the 3 of us didn’t seem do-able. A couple of years when the boys were at Mike’s I had Thanksgiving with a friend at a restaurant. Somehow, it made me even sadder than the years I did nothing at all, when I would just stay home alone and pretended it was just an ordinary day. Two years ago, we had our first “organic” thanksgiving at my brother Jimmy’s house in Austin cooked by my sister-in-law who is very health conscious. The food was delicious and healthy and though there was no sweet potato pie, it was a wonderful day.
This year, I will head to Austin to have Thanksgiving with Juliet and Chris. Andy won’t be able to go because he has started a new job and Joe won’t be able to go because he has to work. But I am thankful that I will be with family and I’m sure that Luby’s or Threadgills’ or wherever we end up tomorrow for our meal will be delicious. I’ve had my sweet potato pie. My co-worker Jack made 3 and brought them to work on Tuesday. I keep telling myself that sweet potatoes are a vegetable and I’ve had enough to satisfy the last 7 years worth of being without since my mom died. I may even ask him for his recipe at some point and attempt to make one on my own.
And more than anything this year, I am counting my blessings. I have found love again and will marry Joe in the near future. Next Thanksgiving I’ll be Mrs. Joe Swanson and that’s a blessing I didn’t expect that came my way this year. Andy has a new job and is healthy and happy. Chris and Juliet have new jobs and are healthy and happy. My brothers and sister and their families and my dad and Doronda are still a huge part of my life and a blessing that I never forget I have. My co-workers are my family. I have a Church family. I have new friends, re-newed friends (like my H.S. Classmates), I have old friends that have and will continue to be a part of my life. I am truly, truly, truly blessed.
Today in the mail I received a $35 gift certificate from “a friend” …from the address on the envelope I know it was someone at Church that thought of me and gave me this unexpected gift. As I sat and racked my brain as to who could be the anonymous friend that sent this to me, I realized that the mere fact that there were so many possibilities was a huge blessing in itself. I am thankful for my friends. All of them. God bless you all!
At Church Sunday we sang a familiar song and this year more than ever the words seemed to reach out and grab my heart and as I sat there it was all I could do not to burst into tears of gratitude. God has blessed me beyond what I could ever have imagine. I leave you with that
Give Thanks
WITH A GRATEFUL HEART
GIVE THANKS
TO THE HOLY ONE
GIVE THANKS
FOR HE'S GIVEN
JESUS CHRIST, HIS SON
AND NOW LET THE WEAK SAY
I AM STRONG
LET THE POOR SAY
I AM RICH
BECAUSE OF WHAT
THE LORD HAS DONE
FOR US
GIVE THANKS...
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