HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
This year our oldest son is spending Thanksgiving with us and we have looked forward to that. We carefully planned our Thanksgiving menu. Actually it was me not we.
For some reason I was filled with this energy to cook. Becoming daring and cooking old things with a new twist. Not just corn but Corn Pudding Casserole. Not just Sweet Potatoes but Sweet Potato Souffle. Not just whipped cream on the fruit salad but a cooked Famous Fruit Salad Dressing. Not just our regular dressing but a Savory Sausage Stuffing with apples. Even the pie crust. Not the usual Crisco one but a recipe given to me, by an outstanding pie-maker, entitled- Oil Pie Crust.
I had fun planning, fun talking to my sister about new recipes, fun visiting with my Ward sisters/friends about what they were cooking. I had plenty of time to make things. No rush. Actually no hustle. No bustle. Very relaxed.
It's not really about the food. That is what I decided today. Thanksgiving is really about tradition so that does include food. Of course. What it really is about is who we eat the food with. I'm really melancholy today. I want the impossible.
I want to be a time traveler and go back to the very last time of the most wonderful season of Thanksgivings ever. That special year?- The year that my family, my own little group of 5 children plus Terry and myself, shared the last time as an intact group.
It was the first Thanksgiving for our little son, our last child, was then 8 months old and the last, for our first son, who was in his senior year of high school. This was a time that I now look back on with nostalgia, longing, remembrance and I get the sniffles just thinking of it. Those 17 years of Thanksgiving celebrations, when all family members lived full time under the same roof. Full-time living, not visiting on an as can or as needed basis.
It starts with the birth of the firstborn and then the fading eases in, as that first child exits and goes on to college/career and prepares for his independent life. There is a certain feeling that can not be recaptured once your children start leaving the nest.
Today I thought of how hectic, busy, frantic, and often primitive hard, our pioneer life was. Living at times so it seemed in survival mode. But the overall memory is one of togetherness. It is a priceless time when all are living together year by year.
That would be my Norman Rockwell moment...any one of those moments of time, in that 17 year time frame, when we are all sitting at the table for a Sunday dinner, or children are making blanket forts, or children are building a tree fort, or children are playing in the creek, or children are enjoying cold cereal and watching Saturday morning cartoons, or even children are fussing/fighting/horsing around/not minding me at the moment. Children climbing trees, walking dirt roads, carrying water, chopping firewood after felling trees. Children eating homemade bread and enjoying it. Children hugging me and loving me and kissing me.
Thanksgiving was cold, usually snowy and almost always we had people eat with us. Sometimes lots of people. Sawhorses and plywood tables laden with lots of homemade food. Friends from Anchorage that brought their 3 children and stayed for a few days. The fun of close friends.
Times of their Dad hooking a long rope on the back of his terra tractor. The rope was attached to the hood of an old truck. All children old enough, that number was 6, would pile in the hood and they would go racing over the backyard snowfield, being pulled behind the tractor, yelling and screaming all the way. Sharp turns would send them whooshing to the side. They would come in red-cheeked, breathless, loud and excited and very cold. Warming up in front of the wood burning fire and drinking hot chocolate, they would tell of their great daring feats.
There are many memories like that. When the family dynamic changes as children leave home, and it's inevitable, healthy, expected and natural, it nonetheless replaces the irreplaceable. And those years of irreplaceability are the ones that are the most cherished to me.
If fate allowed me to go back and have a retake of my most cherished time...it definitely would be those, all living under the same roof, for whatever period of time that entailed- I'd really drink it all in, realize it would be fleeting, and savor, inhale, broaden my vision, give it my devotion, enlarge my understanding of this priceless time and make it the most worthwhile time possible, allowing nothing to supersede my soon to be irreplaceable years. I would aim for creating magnificent irreplaceable memories.
So I look at my adult children and one married grandchild- scattered from FL to WA, & rejoice in the fact they have families, & they are happy, productive, good people. They love us. We are connected to them. We love them. They are now in that extra special time of their own lives. Living the irreplaceable.
"Pilgrims and Pioneers."
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