Thanksgiving is just around the corner. . .

I am so glad we are approaching the holiday season.  I know not everyone is. Many of my friends dread it because it brings up bad memories.  I have a lot of lousy memories from my past too but none of them cling to the revelry my family enjoyed around the holidays.  Perhaps we put aside our differences, our myriad reasons for arguing about every topic that normally triggered us, and just absorbed, for a few weeks, the magic that the holiday season promised.

We didn’t have a lot of extra money as a family but we did have rituals that I treasured and they began with Thanksgiving.  For the first twenty years of my life we traveled to my grandmother’s in Logansport, IN for a feast that was beyond description.  The turkey was  gigantic, or so it seemed.  Actually it needed to be as big as her oven would hold since more than thirty of us gathered every year.  And then there was her special stuffing.  Most of us wandered into her kitchen, again and again, for a fork full while she perfected it.

The scalloped corn, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy were all in some stage of preparation when we arrived at her house.  The jello molds had been prepared the day before.  It was too bad her kitchen wasn’t twice or three times its size.  It just couldn’t hold, at one time, all who wanted to hover over her every move.  And she never scolded us for getting under foot.  She was a special soul who continues to be one of my “hovering angels,” I’m sure.

The 4 pies, the pumpkin and the raison and of course the cherry and apple too, had been baked before our arrival.  The one thing she did allow us to do was nibble on her very special “dolly vardens,” while we hovered.  They were made from the extra trimmings cut from the edges of the pie crusts.  She dusted them with a little butter, some sugar and cinnamon and rolled them up before baking them.  Yum.  I could have made a meal of them.  I used to secretly wish she’s skip making the raison pie, (not my favorite) and fill in with the sugar and cinnamon treats.

As we gathered at the table, a large table for sure with more than one extension, my Uncle George was called on to say grace.  And then the talk quieted to a murmur as we all savored each and every bite.  As continues to be true in homes all over America, following the meal, the men searched for places to stretch out for a nap and the women gathered in the kitchen to clean up.

I hated to see the day end but I also knew it was a short month until we gathered again at my grandparent’s house.  The holiday was in full swing and I began my personal ritual of dreaming the same dream I had treasured since childhood: the one where I was sure I could hear the footsteps of the reindeer hooves on my roof.

My “dream” may seem silly.  But life deserves moments of lightness.  Don’t you agree?