“Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.” (Psalm 136:1)
Tonight as I write this blog, I am remembering the Thanksgiving holidays of my youth. Going through the memories in my mind leads me to feel humble, and grateful to God for all that He has done in my life. I have great memories of turkey day, and of the life lessons learned throughout the years.
My mother was the General of Thanksgiving dinner. Weeks before the yearly event she’d set out her battle plan. I remember the trips to the General Market in town, where we’d load up the cart with all of the staples; bread crumbs, seasonings, potatoes and meat for the famous “meat stuffing,” flour for the gravy, and butter, lots of butter, for everything else.
We’d visit the farm stand nearby for fresh vegetables, and Mom would take her time carefully viewing and feeling each item for ripeness. The only canned item on our dinner table was the cranberry sauce, and that’s because my Dad loved it (me, too!).
For me, the excitement of the occasion always kicked in on Thanksgiving Eve. Mom would sit in the kitchen and cut up the turnip. The strong, pungent odor of the vegetable would waif through the room as Mom used her heaviest knife to slam through the tough skin of the turnip. I watched as she seemed to attack the vegetable, and wondered what all the fuss was about. I mentioned to her once that perhaps she needed a sharper knife to complete her task. The look she gave me set me back a few steps; it was sharper than any knife. After that, I never questioned her turnip cutting technique again.
I would rise in the morning on Thanksgiving Day to the smell of turkey baking in the oven and the sound of pots clanging in the kitchen. Mom would have already been up for hours, executing her battle plan for the meal. Dad prepared his special pancakes, sometimes adding bananas or blueberries to the mix, and we’d watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on t.v. Then the time would come for us to help with the minor details of setting the table, putting out extra chairs, and anything else that Mom told us to do, as she continued on to master the dinner. It all seemed so simple then. This was Mom’s greatest meal, and not one of us questioned her authority over it.
Things changed the year after Mom passed away. That was the first time I ever looked at Thanksgiving dinner as a battle. And it’s been a challenge for me to avoid such battles ever since.
It began with all of us standing in the kitchen. My Dad, my brother and his wife, my sister and her husband, and I simply looked at each other and said “where do we start?”. Six adults had gathered to prepare a meal that Mom had single-handedly completed every year since we could remember. I’m sure we were perplexed by the whole situation (at least I was) and somehow we decided that the best plan was to just dive in and tackle each task one at a time. Full of courage at the time, I volunteered to take care of the turkey.
I winced as I put my hand inside of the Butterball’s cavity. Immediately all bravery vanished as I felt something squishy and pulled out a plastic bag of “innards”. I placed the bag on the counter and asked “What do we do with this?” We all knew that Mom would have used the contents to make a soup or some other delicious concoction, but none of us could do that. We placed the bag aside, not wanting to deal with it or with the realization that Mom was not there with us that day.
My sister tried her hand at cutting the turnip. After a few minutes, she gave up and my brother finished the task. How did Mom do it all of those years? It was no wonder to us now that she had the strongest hands in the family.
My brother-in-law took on the gravy. Usually a patient and kind man, we all noticed that as time went on, his face became red. We could almost see the steam coming out of his ears as he worked with the drippings and cursed at the lumps in the pan.
Six adults scrambled around in Mom’s kitchen that day, and we were finally able to sit down to eat. But the vegetables were over cooked, the rolls were burnt, the potatoes were cold. Still, we forged on. Dad took the knife to carve the turkey. He’d always been the carver, so this was nothing new to him. But soon, even he encountered an obstacle. Apparently I had not done a great job of cleaning the bird earlier. I couldn’t believe my eyes when Dad put down the knife and pulled another plastic bag out of the turkey! That was the last time I cooked the turkey. Life lesson learned: stay away from the kitchen, very far away!
We laughed heartily that day over our mistakes, and cried openly for the woman who’d somehow been able to make it all seem simple to us for so many years. Maybe we were in denial, maybe we were just ignorant. But whatever the case, I think we all learned a valuable lesson that year; never take a good cook (Mom, in our case) for granted!
Over the years my sister and brother-in-law took on the task of mastering Thanksgiving dinner, and after being shocked by those innards, I continued to find ways to avoid cooking anything at all! I am wholeheartedly thankful each year that my sister and brother-in-law have succeeded in their quest to make the big feast. But every once in a while I still think about how many people it takes to prepare a meal that my Mom did all by herself.
In our house the number of people who gathered for that dinner varied from year to year. I remember one very cold and snowy Thanksgiving Day when my Dad and I went to my pick up my grandmother and bring her back to our house for the meal. It had snowed so much, that we had to shovel the driveway just so that we could get out. When we arrived at Granny’s, my Dad and I shoveled our way in. By the time we got Granny in the car and back to our house (which was only about five miles away) we had to shovel our driveway once again!
But we did all of that with no complaining. It was Thanksgiving after all, and Mom wouldn’t let Granny stay at her home alone. So I learned another lesson that day about the importance of family and that we do whatever we can for those we love, even if we’d rather just sit and watch parades on t.v.
I can only remember one time of my youth when we were not at our home for Thanksgiving, and that’s when we traveled to Long Island to spend the holiday with the family there. It was a blend of Italian and German recipes then, and I wished that I had paid more attention to them, but I was singing songs and drinking wine with the cousins while Mom and my Aunts were in the kitchen. It was the Seventies, we were learning the Hussell in the living room, and life was grand.
But alas, the generations go on, and new traditions for the holiday emerged. Oh, I still maintain my position to remain out of the kitchen as much as possible. That’s just a given.
This year I’ll be spending the day with my niece and her boys, and my nephew. I will miss the rest of the family, but will be content with the knowledge that I have a great family and good friends. God has been faithful to me in putting those people in my life, and I honor Him for it.
And so it goes…the circle is complete as this blog concludes. Through it all, the life lesson learned by the Thanksgiving holiday is this: we give thanks to the Lord for all He has done in our lives. It is His mercy, which endures forever, that carries us, and gives us hope.
May you be blessed with the knowledge of all that God has done for you.
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