This loaded comment is a reference to our Thanksgiving last year in which you and I spent in a Marriott because our ceiling leaked and the downstairs was a mess of industrial dryers and electrical cords. Not exactly baby friendly. We made calls while I did the it's bedtime and I have to check you into a hotel and prepare you for a late bedtime packing dash (travel genes come in handy sometimes) and remembered my kitchen full of feast supplies and threw it in whole foods bags for a hotel kitchen makeshift version. Thanksgiving '09 baby! We still had fun-in the hotel kind of way.
This Thanksgiving, we played between breakfast, walks, making calls to closed businesses, nap, purchasing space heaters-at your mom's least favorite place in the world which happened to be the only open place on Thanksgiving. It was really sad too because people were actual there by choice. With their kids. Scouting out black Friday items and whatnot looking at me like a crazy fool for paying full price for a cart full of appliances looking wide eyed at the scene having been a prior participant of buy nothing day for years. It made me count my blessings that I have never before gone into a store on Thanksgiving and wish there were holidays where nobody did.
Next stop, some groceries because the business meant we missed our celebration meal at Mimi's. We booked it to Whole Foods only to see them closing and the staff scraping every crumb from the prepared feast. Then we drove the car cart through lonely aisles where you beeped and I asked it they had any Thanksgiving anything and a woman handed me a sad frozen box of mashed potatoes and a can of cranberries. I wheeled away and absent mindedly filled the cart with ingredients for stuffing getting frustrated buying non organic mushrooms and my eyes welled over as I missed the warm light, familiar heat, and Thanksgiving smells of family gatherings in Grandma's kitchen. I could see and feel the voices around me so clearly I ached for it and wondered if there would ever be a holiday where I wouldn't crave those bodies around me. Will there ever be a day I won't think of my Grandma as I peel potatoes?
What is it about those perfect tastes of a Thanksgiving meal that is the same meal you've always had prepared by the same hands? Nothing else will do. I miss it's consistency and thank God with all my heart I had fresh peeled, cut, and cooked foods by hands that worked for hours for a meal eaten in minutes. I've always been surrounded by family. By heat. With food that didn't come frozen or in a can. I've always had a house and a home.
I don't know what you'll think of Thanksgiving when you grow up. I doubt you'll ever be so homesick for Nana's stuffing that you well up in Giant. I hope you don't because right now the thought of us ever being separated for any holiday or any day period brings out my Mommy hold on tight claws. But, I do hope you'll live to be a man and have a family. I hope the little things we do will be something precious inside of you. That holidays will be sweet because you remember a family you spent it with. So we came home and skipped bath and I washed, cut, peeled, and cooked with you beside me helping every step of the way. I didn't even set your plate. I piled mine extra high and put on your bib and surprised you with a, "come sit with Mommy and eat." You grabbed my fork and I reached for another and you let out, "UUUmms" and I echoed back, "UUUUMMMMM!!!" We made Daddy's to go and waved to him from the window and climbed into a cold bed and cuddled close reading. You fell asleep laying on top of me with Duma purring in our legs and Hero by our side.
Today we rejoice in our song of thankful hearts and blessed souls with the reminder that we have fires of love inside us kindled by the warm closeness of family near and far. Great is your family Abraham. Great is your God.
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