~:: Turkey Day ::~

My mom used to have these candles she’d put out on the dining room table at Thanksgiving, small, chibi-like wax pilgrims wearing an odd, light, translucent shade of brown.  And there was this fat, round turkey made of some kind of paper – not paper mache, I think, because it was too precise, too thin and detailed.  I wonder where that thing went?  I remember the smell of it.

And her cornucopia, a woven-reed one out of which the fruits of the season came tumbling onto the table—ruddy faux pares, dried seed pods, things like that.  I loved all these things. I don’t remember much about Thanksgiving dinner because we never lived near family.  I imagine we had corn on the table, frozen corn brought back to life in a square, white Corningware pot.  And a turkey and potatoes and gravy (my mom was ace with gravy).  But  I don’t really remember the food.  I just remember the little things that came out only during this season. I made sure that I got that kind of little stuff for myself when I grew up and got a house.  I give them to my kids now, when they get houses, so they will have special things that will remind them of home and gratitude and family.

It seems a little strange that, over the years, our American season of gratitude is only a spot on the map, while the brassier and very commercialized season of “I want a . . .” has swallowed the map entirely.  So all of  November is brown and red and yellow and abundant in our house – remembering where we came from, grateful for what we have.

American Thanksgiving was established by pilgrims who had come away from the mother and father lands, searching for religious freedom – for THEMSELVES, please note.  Not for anybody else.  And found themselves in what they thought was a wilderness, but was actually the home of people who actually lived there first, and had for generations of time.  We love to make Heroes of Freedom out of these pilgrims.  But I’m doubtful you could make it stick when faced with real history.  What you can say about them was that they cared enough about what they believed in to take a suicidal sail over a vast ocean, going – where?  They didn’t really know.  Away.  Away from kings and popes and all the forces of “I got you where I want you.”

Brave?  Fanatic? Desperate?  Whatever—they came, they learned, and with the help of the locals, grew their first crops of almost alien plants.  Then they had a feast – just before the winter set in hard – and invited some of the locals.  And that’s Thanksgiving—being thankful that we’ve made it alive on our own with nobody bossing us – at least, so far.

For me, Thanksgiving means a lot of happy noise and confusion and several people setting the table with all the special stuff—people coming from far away, or just down the street, gathering with them while the alien (in this household) smells of a full, cooking dinner poke your empty innards – and too many cooks in the kitchen are actually welcome.  The tumbling chaos of family.  The warmth of hot bread and hotter gravy.  And pies.  The pies. And the cream lumped on them.  And the laughter, the prayer, the familiness of it all.

Three out of our four kids were out of town/state this year.  For the first time.  Only Chaz left, and Chelsea, who is herself far away from her folks.  Four people for Thanksgiving, and it was STILL loud and silly and busy and delicious.  We had a great time.

I should have written about this before.  Because I wanted to make a timely  list of stuff I’m grateful for.  I’ve put this to you before, what I heard somebody once say: what if you woke up one morning and the only things left in the world (including itself) are the things you’ve at some point in life actually and expressly been thankful for?  So my list gets pretty gritty.

It starts with all the basic, core stuff: love, family, friends, the gospel, the love of God, the sacrifice of the Savior – all the things on that level.  But it gets specific really fast.  Like this, but not necessarily in this order (if you can call it order):

Our bit of  land and barn plus horses

Toilets

Glass

Indoor plumbing of all kinds

Clean water

Furnaces

Antibiotics

Inoculations

Garbage trucks

Toilet paper

Color

Science

Grass

Trees, especially the color changing ones

Cars

Technology: refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, telephones, computer based everything, the internet, calculators, cars – the WHEEL – airplanes – belts, gears, levers, rubber, led lights – LIGHTS OF ALL KINDS –

Music – musical instruments, singing, recordings, choirs, the found music with its form couched in things like trains moving over tracks or city sounds or bird song or everything else.

Photographs, memories, paper.  PAPER and pens and pencils and crayons and chalk

Books about almost everything (I don’t like the ones about ugly stuff)

Sewing machines

Doctors

Plumbers

Electricians

Trucks that bring me strawberries in winter, glass and cheese from Germany, or Switzerland or all kinds of places around the globe.

Maps

GRAVITY

Eyes, smellers, tasters

Pinecones

Cameras

Flashlights

Nails and screws

Ribbons, buttons, beads

Solid floors that keep out bugs

Sweaters

Summer, winter, but mostly spring and fall

Jars and cans

Boxes of forgotten but beloved things

Interdependency that allows us to benefit by each other’s talents and energy

Friends, near and far

Thought

Dreams

Imagination

Freedom to choose

Hope

Fences that can keep little dogs in – and dogs, horses, cats, sheep, cows, armadillos, birds, giraffes, gnus—all life that doesn’t sting.  Not so much the things that want to eat you.

Snow

Reflectivity

Okay.  I’m quitting.  I’ve gotta go work the horses.  It’s like, the last warm day till spring.  Thankful, thankful, thankful.  You can add to my list if you want.  I’ve forgotten a ton of stuff.  So add away.

Be advised: what follows is a shift to Christmas –  the day after Thanksgiving, we grab whatever sons we can while we can and send them out to bring in the Eternal Tree (which is to say, the one made out of nearly-indestructable-in-spite-of-my-lighting-job PVC) so I can start setting the stage for the NEXT month’s revelry.

And there you are – rolling on toward December.