This has been a busy week. Lots to do to get ready for family coming to visit. Lists. Grocery shopping. Cleaning. Baking. Busy, busy, busy.
And now the day is here.
It's a busy morning. The final baking. Preparing The Meal. Busy, busy, busy.
But not too busy to take some time for remembering.
Remembering all the ways I've been blessed this year. Friends. Family. New places I've visited. Places I've revisited. Answered prayers.
Remembering Thanksgivings past. And the people I shared them with.
Remembering my parents, both gone for several years now. Mother in the kitchen, wearing her apron, bustling around trying to get the meal ready on time. Daddy, hovering in the kitchen, pretty much getting in the way, since it wasn't a particularly large kitchen. He was waiting to be told it was time to carve the turkey, and hoping to be called on to be a taste-tester!
Remembering my Grandmother Neil and my Uncle JB, who always shared our Thanksgiving meal. I particularly remember the year Grandmother bit down on the cream-cheese-stuffed celery (always a part of our Thanksgiving meal) and broke her false teeth. I think the teeth may have already been cracked. In any event, it gave us all a good laugh. She may not have thought it quite as funny as the rest of us, but she laughed any way.....and went without teeth for several weeks while new ones were made!
Remembering my cousins Anne and Richard Sevier. They were always at our Thanksgiving table. Anne always brought a relish tray. Daddy always said it was because she couldn't cook.
On a side note, I have another funny memory of Anne's lack of cooking ability. We (my parents, my brother, and I) once had dinner with Anne and Richard. Anne had prepared (or attempted to prepare) beef burdundy. On the way back to our house after dinner, Daddy remarked, without cracking a smile, "That woman can ruin a perfectly good piece of meat."
During the earlier years of our marriage, before we started moving all around the country, we always had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house. Occasionally, as I and they got older, and as I became a better cook, we would sometimes have Thanksgiving dinner at our house.
But because we moved around the country so much, it wasn't always possible to be back in South Carolina for Thanksgiving. On those occasions, we shared the Thanksgiving meal with friends. One year with the Kaisers and the Rodgers in Connecticut. One year with the Eyes in Colorado. One year in Minnesota with the Gresses. Other Minnesota Thanksgivings with the Biggers.
Precious memories indeed. At this season of Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for so many things. And especially grateful for memories of Thanksgivings gone by, and for the special people I shared those days with.
"I thank my God always when I remember you." (Philemon 4 ESV)
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