John! You commented on our blog! Cool. A suggestion for you, since you like epic movies--I liked Stardust. Not epic in length, but it definitely transported me out of my self. A dangerous thing, really, since I was ironing at the time.
I am thankful for food--for the opportunity to make it, to eat it, to share it with loved ones. Some of my favorite memories, and my favorite memories to make, are around the dinner table, sharing good food and talking to each other, creating inside jokes, and bonding as a family. Cooking is not a burden if the food brings the family together.
When I was a kid, we'd always go to Utah over the summer for a few weeks. My grandma would make sure to get all the siblings and cousins together for a big family dinner one night while we were there. I vividly remember her cucumber salad--eating that made me realize just how much I like dill. Every time I have a cucumber, I can see Grandma's kitchen in my head, all of us squeezed around her big kitchen table with the extra leaf put in. She has the nicest tablecloths she uses for that table--they're almost like a big doily, they're that pretty. And I know I've spilled cranberry sauce on at least one of them during one of the many Thanksgivings we were there.
So we'd squish and talk and laugh and use the giant lazy susan in the middle to pass the food around and get yelled at for spinning it too fast. In the summer there was always watermelon for dessert--we'd sit on the patio and spit the seeds out in the backyard. I wonder how many renegade melon plants got mowed down over the course of the past few years?
Now the cousins have grown and married and scattered, as happens in this life. Our current families couldn't all fit around the table, but I wish we could, one last time. Maybe that's what heaven is like--one giant family dinner, where we swap stories and explain ourselves and spill a little cranberry sauce and sow our wild watermelons. I'm going to think it's that way because I like the idea.
Happy Thanksgiving, Grandma! Thank you for the memories.
3 comments:
Thanks. I love that movie, and it's a good median when the man wants a action film, but the woman wants a chick flick. I'm always thankful for food, because like you talked about it's a trigger to your memory. I have very memorable moments when I've had something good and bad.
I would love it if that was how heaven ended up being. How wonderful.
I really love this post. It's well written, well constructed and very evocative. In our family, there were few time, if any, when we had that kind of Thanksgiving - we hardly knew our cousins and they were spread in age from late teens to baby - and there were only eight of them altogether. My grandmother's house wasn't one you messed around in in that happy kid way - very formal.
And Nana lived with us, so her table was actually mom's table. I loved the feeling I got from reading your memories, and realize that my own kids DO have those kinds of memories, and that my grandchildren will, too. And that makes me very, very happy.
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