Alone with my husband who had Alzheimer's, my daughter who had a stroke 30 years before, and was handicapped, I began to remember many years Thanksgivings , throughout my life..I was 74 years old.
Thanksgiving Memories
It was November of 2004. The week after Thanksgiving. This is my story of that day. Thanksgiving Day last week started off slow. My car wouldn’t start. Well, not actually my car, but my personal motor. I just couldn’t get going. It was cold, and clear, a nice day in North Texas. But I was feeling down and depressed, because there was no one coming for dinner-only me, and my husband and daughter, Julie, who all live together. Just another day for us! The rest of the kids were having Thanksgiving dinner with their spouse’s family. We were planning our Dinner for Saturday.
The day dragged by, and I tried to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV to get in the mood. Nothing happened. I thought about all the Thanksgivings in the past. I sat there reminiscing and like a movie reel, they all came to me, one by one.
I thought about the Thanksgiving Days back on the farm in the 30’s and the 40’s when we would kill our own turkey, since we grew turkeys. I can’t remember how they killed the turkey? Did they wring the necks like we would do the chickens? Nope! They were too big. Did they chop off their heads? Probably! Mother would cook the most scrumptious dressing I ever ate. I loved my mothers cooking and especially her dressing. She stuffed the turkey and cooked the bird and dressing all together, and the aroma drifted outside the house all morning. She made home made pumpkin pies, scooping out the pumpkin and cooking it until it was mushy. We always had vegetables she had canned from her garden in the summer. And the great big chocolate and spice cakes she made from scratch stood over on the shelf just waiting to be cut.
Sometimes we had company, sometimes we didn’t. There were always enough of us with just our family, nine or ten of us. But it was more fun when company came. After the big dinner, I remember we had to listen to the Texas/A&M game on the radio. Texas was always our team. I listened right along with my daddy and my brothers. I loved football.
When it was over, I went out to play football with my brothers. I like playing as much as I liked to watch and listen to football. I was a tomboy.
As I sat there, I thought about all the Thanksgivings after I left home and married, when we would go back to the farm sometimes, along with Margaret and Johnny and their kids, and there would be a bigger turkey and a bigger crowd. Then Mother and Daddy moved to San Antonio and we would alternate Thanksgiving with the Wausons and the Zooks. It made it easier for Margaret and me, as we married brothers. Our kids loved to go to either the Zooks or Wausons because there were always cousins there to play with.
When we moved to North Texas, we always seemed to make it home for Thanksgiving. We would drive on Wednesday nights, and get stuck in all the traffic on IH35, going through Waco, where they were working on the highway and it was down to one lane.
Some years, we waited till Thursday morning to drive to San Antonio and get to the Zooks house just in time to eat! It was worth the drive to stand elbow to elbow in a tiny house, with 30 or 40 other relatives, trying to eat our dinner all piled high on a large paper plate. You had to turn sideways to edge through the hall to get to the one bathroom.
It was worse if it was cold and rainy outside. No one could go out and eat at the picnic table out back. Thank goodness for the carport, which they had for years on Irwin Drive. Thank God South Texas has warm weather most November days.
I thought about the times we went to East Texas for Thanksgiving, when our daughter Kristi and Bill and their kids lived on a ranch. We had dinner in their big old rambling ranch house and everyone wrote down on a piece of paper before dinner, things they were thankful for. Even the seven and eight year olds wrote down things that were so touching, I still have them all saved in a box. We would build a fire in the fireplace in the family room near the kitchen and the fireplace in the living room, if it were cold, and just being all together, watching the sun go down over the trees near the Trinity River across the road, gave me such peace, and things to be Thankful for.
I thought about the year we spent Thanksgiving in Palestine, all of our kids and grandkids at our son Trent’s big old house. The trees in that little town were so brilliant with color that year, and the little kids spent the whole day playing in the piles of bright colored leaves. We took our good friend Imelda, from Mexico, who was helping Julie that year, and her fiancé, Troy, and that Thanksgiving is etched in my memory as a great one. On the way home to Ft. Worth, we stopped off to visit a very old tiny Methodist Church north of Palestine. Walking through the little old wooden church, with a Christmas tree already decorated near the front of the church, I felt so happy and peaceful and grateful to God for all He had given me.
I thought about some sad Thanksgivings when our family was going through trials and turmoil and tragedies, and in a large family like ours, there are many, like deaths, and divorces, and losses of all kinds, and we would try to make the most of it and get together anyway. We were thankful, but things were just not the same. We knew life had to go on.
But it was so hard.
This seemed to be one of those days. It was going to be hard, not knowing what the future holds for us, since my husband has Alzheimer’s Syndrome and it is getting harder and harder for him to remember things, and harder for me to cope. But yet, I knew I had to do something today or I would wind up with the “dreary doldrums”.
As the day went by and I tried to busy myself, finally it came to me. “I need to go to the grocery store and get the fixings for a Thanksgiving Dinner. Right now! The grocery store closes in 30 minutes”
I rushed to the store and ran the cart up and down the aisles throwing things in the cart as fast as I could, the last roasted chicken sitting all lonesome in the deli, a pan of cornbread dressing, some Cranberry Sauce, fresh vegetables, some frozen apple and cherry pies, and all the other things that make for a good Thanksgiving Dinner. As I pushed my cart piled high with bags out the door, I could hear the clerks announcing the store closing in five minutes.
In one hour I had the dinner ready. As I bustled around the kitchen, I began to sing, “Over the hills and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go!” I began to feel much better.
It was 5:00 PM. I set the table with a nice cloth, lit the candles on the table, and put the Thanksgiving Dinner on the table. I called Julie and Eddie to come eat. They came in amazed! We all sat down, and as I blessed the food, I gave thanks to the Lord, for showing me that I needed to make the most of any situation. I thanked Him for getting me up off my rear end to get in gear, like my brother Don said, “Like that old pickup on the farm, when it was cold and it would not start. You just had to keep cranking it over and over, till you got it started.” That was me. And I was glad I got started. It really felt like Thanksgiving Day!
A wonderful story! As rough as times are, they can still be beautiful if we make a little effort.
Your story struck home because, for many years now, Thanksgiving has just been a day like many others. However, my partner is enthralled with the sales and last year, bought six turkeys for me to eat. She makes them with all the trimmings, although I've had to cut back on portions, I'm thankful to enjoy turkey with all the fixings many times during the year. But I still remember those family get-togethers with cousins and the times we couldn't go because there was too much snow. Those were the days…
