Thanksgiving has always been an important holiday to me and my family, celebrating every year with traditional foods and loved ones. There are many that I remember and many that I do not with a particular food taking the spotlight sometimes and etiquette blunders coming to mind at others. Most of my memories are of those Thanksgivings after Jim and I were married. One thing to count on with remembered holidays is that without fail emotions are involved.
My Aunt Sadie and my grandmom had a tradition of serving duck for Thanksgiving. I’m not sure where that came from, but duck was never high on my favorite food list. I can remember looking at the dark brown, glistening fowl with disdain and sorrow barely managing to take one bite. Those were the years I faked an upset stomach and satisfied my hunger with pumpkin and sweet potato pie. I felt guilty when Grandmom offered to make me some duck broth soup, her version of Thanksgiving chicken noodle, to which I had to reply, “No, thank you.”
And then there was the year Jim and my stepfather, Ken, went in together to buy rabbit dogs for hunting. We kept the cute little beagle type dogs at our home, and who could not fall in love with them, so active and loving and begging all the time. But no one was allowed to play with them, sadder and sadder, because that would supposedly ruin their hunting abilities. Autumn was always hunting season in Delaware. And those dogs were so productive, sniffing out rabbits and squirrels like nobody’s business. Have you ever seen a rabbit or squirrel skinned…not pretty. Of course, you can guess what we had for Thanksgiving dinner that year…at my mom’s house, not mine…fried squirrel and rabbit. Another year of the tummy ache. But I have to say that the dressing (not stuffing when you don’t have a bird) was pretty darn delicious. My mom was a great cook!
In the mid 80s after we had moved to Florida, Jim’s sister, Jean, and brother-in-law, Peter, flew down from Minnesota to visit us for Thanksgiving so we invited all the near-by relatives to our home for the yearly feast. That included Jim’s aunt and uncle, Jean and Russell, his brothers, Howard and Jack, and their families, about 20 of us altogether. Good thing we had a porch for the kids! I baked the normal turkey with stuffing in my mom’s old turkey roaster and all the usual sides of green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and homemade yeast rolls. I was not a connoisseur of gravy so Jean, the sister, took over that job and she turned out to be an expert at it. The episode that prompts this particular Thanksgiving memory is a little embarrassing and not one that I’m all that comfortable sharing. Peter is still alive but Jean passed away a few years ago. We had all just sat down to eat, and Peter dug in right away. The rest of us bowed our heads as the other Jean, Jim’s aunt, said a beautiful grace over our bountiful spread amid the sudden cessation of the noise of eating utensils. No one said anything and no one ever mentioned it later, but it remains as a fixture in my brain that I would like to forget. Peter and Jean had a wonderful time visiting us, I hope. We went to Disney and Peter attended a golf tournament in Tampa while the rest of us went to Busch Gardens. Jean was a feisty little sister and I remember her getting into a squabble with someone about cutting in line. Isn’t it funny the things our minds choose to remember?
After Jim passed away in 2012, his sister-in-law, Juanita (Jack, her husband passed away in 1987), always invites me to the family Thanksgiving dinner at her home in Bronson. She makes the turkey, stuffing, and ham and all the kids (six of them) bring the sides…except for the green beans. Nobody makes green beans like Juanita. Her secret is bacon and home-grown beans. Back when I ate meat, I filled up on green beans! Now that I don’t eat meat I hesitate about going, but we did have some wonderful meals at Juanita’s. She is a great cook and her children have learned well from her. I could always expect new desserts like hummingbird cake and no mundane pumpkin pie, always something special and different. And she had the largest and most beautiful Thanksgiving cactus ever…or maybe it was Christmas cactus. I never could tell the difference. She could grow anything she put her mind to.
Family is such a treasure at Thanksgiving. This year my daughter is in Scotland so she will miss the big feast here. She insists she will enjoy haggis and black pudding while I will travel with my granddaughter and family to her in-laws in Keystone Heights. It will be my first time at Rusty and Myra’s home and I am looking forward to it. An addendum to this Thanksgiving remembrance may be added later. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
