Thanksgiving Memories

Journaling:

It was just David and me this year for Thanksgiving Day. He’s pretty much ready to get back to real life after his out-patient surgery on Tuesday, but it was a good thing to have no plan to go anywhere this year. Our things to be grateful for start with no complications and his already comfortable tapering off the pain meds.

But as I watched the Lions victory in high definition on our new TV and enjoyed a lazy “PJs day” amid the calls and texts from family, my biggest holiday smiles are form the memories that will always keep Thanksgiving the most special of all the holidays to me.

I miss the tradition at Thanksgiving that pretty much died with Grandma. I miss the family table and getting together. Even when it was just 4 or 5 of us, when the family for dinner became smaller and grew and shrunk, it was still the warm family holiday.

It was bigger than Christmas to me and in my heart it still is because of the wonderful memories. The best Thanksgivings were the ones in Hale. Traveling up to the little place in the woods, sometimes with a stop at Freeway Fritz or Wilson’s in Pinconning and always with a stop at the rest area just before I got off the freeway in Standish to give Grandma a call and let her know I was less than an hour away. I always made that call when I went to Grandma’s but there was something more festive for that wonderful holiday she hosted.

Thanksgiving Day always started with the smell of coffee. I usually brought a bag of Starbucks coffee Holiday Blend or Verona and flavored creamers, making sure one was amaretto for Grandma. To go with the coffee were my favorite donuts in the dozen Grandma got at Kocher’s because they were my favorite and getting those ones were as important as  her favorite peanut ones to her. There was also fresh fruit and that coffee maker kept the mugs filled all morning, 

The women chopped vegetables and potatoes for the side dishes. When the time came Pop put the turkey in the oven. The relish dishes were filled with my cranberry relish, olives, pickles, deviled eggs and the cream cheese filled celery that I nibbled a little and finished almost single handed when we played Yahtzee or UNO after dinner.

And the smell, oh the smell of the turkey with Mom’s Sage Dressing wafting through wile we made the potatoes and veggies for the meal. Pop and I got our exercise during meal prep. He walked back and forth between watching the Lions game and checking on o0ur progress, seeing if we needed anything and I wandered in to check the score and watch a few plays in between cooking. When Aunt Judy, then David was added everyone fell into the traditional roles for just that day and it was okay. Grandma was a retired retail manager and I was a producer/project manager and Pop has always loved to cook, but on Thanksgiving Day we all assumed the roles of a half century ago and it was comfortable.

After the feast there was more! There was so much abundance to be thankful for. There was the dessert table with at least 2 pies, sometimes 3, cookies, a cheese plate with fruit and donuts left from the morning served with wine from dinner or more coffee usually after the year’s game of choice for a while when some digestion made room for the stomachs to expand again for a piece of pie. No one ever remembered who won UNO or Yahtzee that never mattered; it as part of the family time, the tradition that made us so rich.

Fantastic keepsake page!  Love the journaling and how you captured the feeling of the holiday with your words.  The corner cluster is wonderful and the word bit with it is a fabulous touch.