Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

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It’s Thanksgiving Day in America and I have spent some time today studying vintage postcards and images on the internet. This image popped up on someone’s Pinterest board about vintage Thanksgiving. You should go look at their many pins over there. They have some good stuff.

This lady reminds me of my grandma. You can bet her stuffing didn’t come from a box and you have to wonder how many children were rocked to sleep in those strong arms. “Grandma will find you a cookie,” I can hear her say.

Look how joyful she is!

When you are a cook and a caregiver, feeding your family is a blessing and joy so Thanksgiving must be a truly happy day for those folks.

As for me, my sugar cookies are homemade as is the butterscotch filling for my pie. But don’t tell anyone….. the pie crust is from the frozen food section! I’ll make the crust from scratch next time.

Wherever you are, I hope for at least a while in your life you had someone like this lady who brought this level of joy to feeding their family.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Conflicted Thoughts On Thanksgiving

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When I sat down to write about Thanksgiving for today, I drew a blank. This has never happened to me. Past stories on this day have ranged from Norman Rockwell to how holidays are hard for those who have experienced loss.

When I did start to write, it quickly wound its way into something you don’t want to read and I shouldn’t publish. It started with the whitewashing of the first Thanksgiving story and meandered all the way into my scathing disapproval for how it’s more a day of national gluttony than a day of thanks.

I cut out all the juicy parts but you get the gist.

Except that isn’t what this blog is about and that isn’t why you’re here. Do me a favor though. Take a few minutes today to broaden your perspective and google “how indigenous people view Thanksgiving.”

Meanwhile, I am grateful today for my family and friends, for my little cat Scout and for the job that allows me to give him the lifestyle he believes he deserves. I’m grateful for my warm home, for fresh produce from the grocery store and and for all things in nature – even some of the creatures I don’t really like but that are vital to our ecosystem.

I am grateful for the ability to travel and adventure some and for having a camera on my phone so I can freeze time even when my good camera is at home.

I’m grateful for books and the authors who write them as well as for the small businesses across America that give our communities character. I am grateful for the wisdom to know when it’s appropriate to publish a diatribe on a national holiday and when it’s best to start again. I’m also grateful for a country where free speech allows me to decide that for myself.  

I’m grateful for lots more things including all my readers – particularly those of you who leave comments or contact me privately to chat about that day’s story. I truly enjoy hearing from you even though I have been struggling to keep up my end of the conversation lately! Things will be calmer soon. 

With that in mind, I would love to know something you’re grateful for this Thanksgiving. This isn’t a happy day for everyone, particularly those who have lost loved ones, but an exercise in gratitude makes the world seem brighter. 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, friends!!

Thanksgiving Thoughts

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Today is Thanksgiving here in America.

It is intended to be a day for gathering with loved ones to express thanks for life and the blessings we enjoy. For some, the day is about gluttony and football too.

Depending on your family dynamics, it could also be about a kind of restraint that some might call passive aggression as your out-of touch relatives rant about the state of the world. If you lack in restraint, it could include lively arguing discussion of politics and the politicians who don’t care one ounce about you while your defending them ruins the holiday meal.

For others it marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season and the hunt for bargains. For some without family, it is a day alone and for some it’s a day of lost pay that is much needed.

Many people spend the holiday remembering loved ones who are no longer with us. Chances are you know someone who is marking their first holiday without a parent, child, spouse or dear friend. Whether it’s the first or the tenth Thanksgiving without their loved one, they’re just muddling through. Show them some grace. That will be you someday.

It’s not a happy day for everyone and yet a glorious time of celebration for many. The ways we celebrate Thanksgiving are as diverse as our nation.

I’m hosting today but my mother will do the cooking. I can be trusted with a veggie tray and dessert and with putting some elbow grease into making everything clean and pretty. I cannot be trusted with anything more important than that and this is fine by me.

Today, I’m thankful that I’m not responsible for cooking the stars of the meal. I’m thankful for the family I was born into and the people I have chosen. I’m thankful for my little cat Scout and for the job that allows me to give him the life he thinks he deserves. I’m thankful for easy access to the natural world, for good books and the people who write them. I’m thankful for the impending shift in seasons and for my own good health. I am thankful for the adventures I’ve had and those to come.

I’m thankful for all I have and for all I’ve lost. Each day, all the good stuff and especially the adversity have helped me become the human I am. For this I am grateful too.

Wherever you are in this world today, it is my fondest hope you have so many blessings that it’s hard to count them all.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving

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It’s Thanksgiving in America. This is meant to be a day of thanks for the blessings we’ve enjoyed for the last year but it’s more a day of food and football. Tomorrow, as folks will spend the day buying a bunch of stuff they probably don’t need and can’t afford.

A Norman Rockwell painting we are not.

This painting is called “Home For Thanksgiving.” It was featured on the November 24, 1945 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. That was 77 years ago today.

The young man and his mother were real people. He was freshly home from the war and helping his mother with chores he likely would have hated doing in the Army Air Corps. Kitchen Patrol or KP duty probably didn’t seem so bad in the warmth of his mama’s kitchen.

Rockwell paid them each $15 to sit for the portrait. I read once that they owned the local dairy in their Vermont small town and that the young man was Rockwell’s milkman.

This painting was donated to the Eugene M. Connor Post 193 of the American Legion in Massachusetts many years ago. But they didn’t know it was an original and left it hanging in a hallway for decades. When someone offered $500 for what the Legion thought was a print, they took it to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts for appraisal.

After learning they owned an American treasure, they loaned it to the museum for display and safekeeping.

Just last year, the Legion sold it at auction for $4.3 million. This hefty sum went into a trust and interest earned will help pay bills and fund future repairs for the Legion.

It’s a beautiful slice of Americana and I like how it illustrates a nation transitioning from wartime into peacetime. Something so everyday like peeling potatoes probably felt almost luxurious to the soldier and his mother who had suffered untold sleepless nights in his absence.

Her relief is palpable.

Gratitude would have been the only thing that mattered in many households across the nation that Thanksgiving. Our soldiers were headed home. Life was returning to a new normal. Life was good.

Wherever you are in this world today, I hope life is good. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Last Pie

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My Aunt Mary Ann was among the last of the old fashioned cooks in my family. She was skilled with abilities that were handed down through generations of women who could create meals, seemingly out of nothing more than flour, egg and bacon grease.

Pies, noodles, dumplings and fudge were among her specialties. She also made great lasagna and the best deviled eggs I have ever eaten.

When she died back in August, I couldn’t help but look ahead to the holidays and think about the empty seat at our family table and the foods she would normally provide.

I would especially miss those deviled eggs.

So, when we discovered a homemade pie in her freezer, it really should have come as no surprise. After all, she liked to have a baked good ready when someone in the community died or when there was another need.

My parents invited the family for an early Thanksgiving dessert night over the weekend. Everyone brought a homemade treat to share. We had red velvet cake, chocolate pie, peach cobbler and butterscotch pie.

Mary Ann’s pumpkin pie was there too. Everyone got to enjoy a small, symbolic piece of her last pie.

As much as Mary Ann enjoyed baking, she loved having her family together more. She told me that her happiest memories as an adult were when my grandparents were living and all the family gathered together for a meal. I think it would please her to know that her pie brought everyone together again.

I wrote a story about Mary Ann just weeks before she died and read it at her funeral. If you’re interested, click here to read that story. Otherwise, here’s wishing you a happy day, wherever you are, and a happy Thanksgiving if you are here in America.

Be safe, be well and try not to eat too much!

Scout’s Gratitudes

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Scout was curled up with me in our reading chair last night and he looked so content that I started thinking about gratitude and cats and what he might be thankful for if he could speak.

I think this is what he would say:

I’m thankful for my furever home with the big, sunny windows and warm bed. I’m thankful for the squirrels, birds, bunnies and chipmunks that visit me through the window and for my mama who makes sure I never go hungry and always have toy mousies to play with. I’m thankful for my Grammy and Grampy who sent me turkey for dinner last night and for my new Christmas rug that Mama bought just for me.

Just so you know, I did not buy that rug for him but he has staked claim to the darn thing and, like everything else I own, it’s his now.