November 24, 2016 | We gather together the people we love and we tell them we are thankful for their presence in our lives. Those are the traditions my grandmothers would be proud they handed down.
Cleaning the oven and sharpening the knives might be disconcerting preparations to witness if you were Hansel and Gretel happening upon the crazy lady in her candy house in the woods, but both tasks are listed on my Monday Before Thanksgiving game plan. Why? Because they were listed on my mother's plan, and her mother's, before her. Because of these ladies and their traditions, I have learned that a Thanksgiving Feast cannot be properly prepared if my oven is dirty or my knives are dull.
Exactly thirty five years ago, a handsome young man picked me up for our first date. It was the Morp dance (backwards prom) and it was the night before Thanksgiving. I was incredibly nervous. He walked me to his car, opened my door for me, and when he climbed behind the steering wheel, I blurted out something that turned out to be profound, but at the time it was just painfully nerdy. "Happy Thanksgiving Eve!"
The couple in the back seat, the other half of our double date, laughed out loud, before that was actually a thing (LOL). My face turned red, and I knew he'd never ask me out again because I was such an awkward dweeb of a human being.
It must have been a Thanksgiving Eve miracle, because it ended up being the last first date of my life.
Every year, in the midst of crazy Thanksgiving Eve preparations, my husband and I take a moment to celebrate the anniversary of our first date. For thirty-five years. It may seem like a long-held tradition, but those thirty-five years slipped through my fingers like a butter-covered twenty-pound turkey. Believe me, the years slip quickly by, and before you know it, you've got yourself a tradition.
Neither my mother, nor any of our grandmothers, will sit at our Thanksgiving table this year. They have been in heaven for many years. But my 92-year-old mother-in-law will take a place at the table this year, close to the fireplace so she can stay warm, and she will regale us with stories of how the purple grape salad came to the first Thanksgiving table. It was all due to Great Aunt Arveda. None of us have ever met Great Aunt Arveda, but we all know her name because of her contribution to our Thanksgiving menu.
The bounteous selection of handed-down recipes is all due to these oven-cleaning, knife-sharpening matrons. Granted, amongst those recipes there is a white jello salad made with pineapple and chopped nuts and shredded cheddar, attributed to my Grandma Vernie. Perhaps it's the persistence of these women, who determinedly made this jello every year, that prods us to add it to our own menu time and again. We find ourselves unwilling to break with tradition. Or, maybe we just want to see our own grandchildren slyly picking through the strange concoction, searching for the reason for such a combination of foods, like somehow the answer is hidden inside it, like one of those plastic babies in a Mardi Gras cake. Maybe the act of looking for the reason it exists is a tradition, too, because I've picked through a square of befuddlement arranged on a lettuce leaf, and wondered who thought to throw that stuff into some gelatin. I would blame it on Aunt Arveda, but that's the wrong side of the family.
When my mother was little, they ate Thanksgiving dinner at her grandparents' home. There was a separate table for the children. The food was passed to the adults' table before it made it to the children's table, and one year, there were not enough potatoes. When the bowl was passed to the children, it was empty. Empty. For the youngsters around the little table, there would be no mountains of potatoes on their plates. They would not mound them up and use their spoons to form a lake for turkey gravy. The travesty of that moment was etched into my mother's memory. Never again in her lifetime would there be an empty mashed potato bowl at her table. She grew up in Shelley, Idaho, after all. The home of the Russets. The Potato Capital. She over-compensated for that loss to the point that we had enough mashed potatoes for a week's worth of leftovers every Thanksgiving. I think of my mother every single time I have the good fortune to mound potatoes on my plate.
We sit at the table and list what we're thankful for. We assign people Indian names to see how many kernels of Indian corn we can rack up by the end of the meal. (Don't make unkind remarks about the use of Indian names. We tried it with both pilgrim and Indian names, but calling people Constance and Miles through the meal wasn't nearly as entertaining as Eats Like a Bear and Whispering Willow.) We make cornucopias from bread dough. We slather every vegetable in a cream-based nullification of its nutrients. We always think there won't be enough pie. We make our own cranberry sauce just the way Grandma made it. But, most importantly, we gather together the people we love, and we tell them we are thankful for them in our lives.
Those are the traditions my grandmothers would be proud they handed down. Those are the traditions they would be proud we are carrying forward.
I'm thankful I live in a little house--a house so little, we have to push the furniture to the walls to finagle a table large enough to seat us all, because that means we've got such an abundance of people we are thankful for, the room cannot contain them, and those loved ones who come through the door today will only be a smattering of the people we love on this planet. That's a better blessing than the bounteous mashed potatoes.
All you loved ones, and you know who you are, we are thankful today for you. If you are not with us, we miss you. We hope you have a good meal and good conversation and a chance to voice your thanks. If you do not, please come on over to our little house.
The china may not match, and the chairs won't either, but we will squeeze in another place at the table. There will always be room for you. And there will always be potatoes.
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