Thanksgiving is my
favorite holiday. I don’t suppose that’s always been true; as a child,
Christmas was probably my favorite. Or maybe Easter. But in my adulthood,
Christmas’s commercialism finally got to me. And for the past several years, I’ve
celebrated Easter quietly, usually with viewing the sunrise over the Atlantic
Ocean with my beloved little Henry-Dog. Thanksgiving though, that one has
always been about family – whatever that family may look like.
My earliest recollection
of a Thanksgiving is at my Wallis grandparents’ home in Arcadia. I don’t particularly
recall any of the food; what I remember best is the great spectacle my
grandfather – “Grandy,” we called him – made of honing his knife prior to
carving the turkey. He made that blade sing!
As for the rest of the
meal, I’m sure it was pretty fabulous. My “Meemaw” was a great cook … and she
believed in making sure everyone was WELL fed. Surely her biscuits were on the
table, and maybe my mother’s dressing. I’m betting that dessert was split
between Meemaw’s absolutely divine chocolate cake, which I always referred to
as her “black cake,” and my mother’s amazing pecan pie. I couldn’t have been
very old, maybe eight at the most, because my grandfather died before my ninth
Thanksgiving.
And so Thanksgiving
changed, somewhat. For a few years, my mother was in charge of Thanksgiving.
And man, did she do it up! Appetizers like celery stuffed with cream cheese and
olive, and you had to be sure not to get too stuffed on the stuffed celery, mainly
because the turkey – a slow-roasted masterpiece that took HOURS and meticulous
basting – awaited, as did her beautiful dressing, mashed potatoes and dreamy
giblet gravy, green beans, other fresh vegetables … whatever she dreamed up.
Plus that amazing pecan pie.
But then Thanksgiving
changed again, when we started to get together with local farm families, first,
under the shelter of a vegetable stand operated by one of my mother’s friends,
later, further away from town in someone’s pasture off of Hog Bay Road. These
were no quiet pass-the-plate affairs; they were huge potlucks reminiscent of a
church supper, with one large flat-bed trailer holding all manner of scrumptious
side dishes and a slightly smaller trailer laden with decadent desserts.
Oh. And a HUGE cauldron of
swamp cabbage. Always a prime feature for me: swamp cabbage sure ain’t much to
look at, but it is dee-licious. You may know it as “heart of palm” from the menus
of fine restaurants or maybe you’ve seen a can on the shelf of a grocery store.
But we know and love it as the vegetable that helped many a rural Floridian
survive during the hard days of the Great Depression.
Swamp cabbage isn’t the
only thing that set those pasture Thanksgivings apart, though! There was no
turkey served at these affairs, just an appetizer of pork ribs and the main
course of fresh, local Florida beef. On one particularly memorable
Thanksgiving, I saw the most magnificent Tom turkey I’d ever seen before or
since, parading around the gathering as if he knew that, among these cattlemen
and their families, he would never be the hapless guest of honor.
As fun as those times
were, they came to an end. I’m not really sure why – whether it was just our
family’s participation that ended, or whether some of the key organizers were
finding the gatherings more difficult to manage. At any rate, Thanksgiving
changed again, and in this next phase I was in charge. I managed the turkey
well, selected really wonderful appetizers and side dishes, including making my
mother’s dressing for the very first time … but had to use gravy out of the
Franco-American bottle, because I have never mastered gravy. And I still
depended on my mother for that amazing pecan pie. Sometimes the gathering would
be at my house, sometimes at my best friend’s house; and although Thanksgiving
had by this time become a sort of blended-families affair, it just seemed right
and natural.
As my parents grew older,
large gatherings with heaps of food and turkey leftovers that lasted for days
and days were no longer attractive to them. And so Thanksgiving changed yet
again; once we ordered a complete meal from Publix, and once while visiting in
North Carolina we actually had our Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. After
my parents moved away from Florida, Greg and I sometimes had dinner at his
sister’s house and once at his niece’s house – and I was introduced to turnip
and potato mash and pierogi.
In 2015 Greg
passed away and as Thanksgiving approached I realized how very much I loved the
holiday and yet how very much I dreaded that day without him. I invited myself
to a close friend’s house, and she and I went for Thanksgiving dinner to the
Dillard House in the north Georgia mountains. We enjoyed the experience so much
that we did it again the following year!
And then Thanksgiving
changed again, and I actually spent the day all by myself. I was supposed to
have gone to the Thanksgiving Bluegrass Festival at Sertoma Youth Ranch. Had my
dish – my mother’s dressing, of course – all picked out and everything. But as
much as I love bluegrass music, and as much as I love Sertoma Youth Ranch, at
that time I did not expect to see anyone I knew very well … and I realized that
I needed to be with family, or with friends who are like family.
Isn’t that what
Thanksgiving is really all about? Evidently, it always was for me, even though
I did not always truly recognize that fact. The past couple of Thanksgivings
have been extremely quiet ones, spent with two very, very dear
friends/neighbors, their dog and mine vigilantly waiting for a morsel to hit
the floor, hilariously jockeying and maneuvering positions as they sized up
which of us might be the messiest eater.
And here we are.
Thanksgiving 2020. Where any of the above-described gatherings would not be
particularly safe. I’ve been “sheltering” with cousins in North Carolina since
the end of March, and so our small gathering, with the Maine Coon, Gwen,
yowling for more servings of turkey and the Henry-Dog strategically parked
underneath the table, was as safe as can be reasonably expected. The food was
prepared by a couple of friends from our small circle, to be distributed among
about a dozen of the circle. We all had our own Thanksgivings, enjoying
artfully-prepared food in the safety of our respective homes.
If I’m honest, I missed
the gathering, the assembly of family and friends who are like family. But this
is not the first hard or unusual Thanksgiving of my life, and realistically
speaking, it will not be my last. It … changed … is all, and I’m so proud of
the friend who came up with the concept of a shared Thanksgiving that – for what
is, hopefully, the one and only time – we did not share in each others’
company.
For me, personally,
Thanksgiving will change again in 2021. But more on that in a future post …
