Thanksgiving past and present

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
~George Herbert

I can scarcely believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving - a day which is not associated in my mind so much with giving thanks as with family traditions, some happy and some not so pleasing. I have spent most of my 50 thanksgivings with family, though I can remember one when I was 21 that I spent at a restaurant with a date. But most have been some variation of the theme, "Over the river and through the woods."

The first Thanksgivings I can remember were spent at my grandmother's house, an urban bungalow in Massachusetts to which we repaired early Thanksgiving morning. Nanny, as we knew her, was always busy in the kitchen in a flowered apron, her iron gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, tempered with crimped waves made with an old fashioned curling iron on the sides of her temples. She was lean and energetic and opinionated. I always found her intimidating.

My mother would pitch in to help and we kids would roam around the tiny house, studying the china dogs on the knick knack shelves, watching the hours strike on the Black Forest cuckoo clock, sitting on the scratchy, maroon chenille sofa, and looking through the drawers in the small roll-top desk in my mother's old bedroom. The Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was always on the small black and white TV, but it never lasted long enough. It always seemed an eternity till dinner, and there was nothing to do but wait.

The 1930's vintage table always had the extra leaf in and filled the small dining room. It was set with Nanny's best china and with the traditional turkey and pilgrim salt and pepper shakers. The dinner plates always had a pressed glass cup in their centers full of my grandmother's homemade fruit cocktail. We dreaded that fruit cocktail. It was nothing like the syrupy sweet kind you bought in cans at the A & P; this was tart and made with grapefruit! My mother always warned us not to complain about it and to eat it all if we hoped to have the good food, so we all choked it down every year, exchanging knowing, sympathetic glances across the table, and sighed with relief when it was gone.

Then we could dig into the real food. There was turkey, of course, and mashed potatoes, gravy in a fancy gravy boat that only came out at Thanksgiving, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, stuffing, banana bread, cranberry bread, butter, jellied cranberry sauce from a can and my grandmother's cranberry-orange relish that she made in the old-fashioned food grinder. When we had eaten all we could the table would be cleared and the real treat appeared - Nanny's steamed pudding with hard sauce. I never remember eating this any day but Thanksgiving, although it is one of the most heavenly flavors I remember from childhood. Even though it was incredibly rich and came on the heels of a huge dinner, I always felt as if I could eat it all day.

AFter dessert my mother and grandmother cleaned up and washed dishes while the rest of us watched the early dark fall and waited for the last tradition of the day. We always drove to Shoppers World, one of the first suburban shopping centers in Massachusetts, to see the animated Christmas decorations in the plate glass windows. The big, brightly lit windows were always filled with scenes from Santa's workshop where elves worked away at making toys and Santa and Mrs Santa watched approvingly. The nearly life-size elves hammered and sawed and nodded and sewed in an amazingly life-like way. We were spellbound every year. When we got too cold to watch any longer, (it was always cold on Thanksgiving), we piled in the station wagon and headed for home, sleepy and stuffed and breathlessly excited about the advent of the Christmas season which could now officially begin.

That was how I remember Thanksgiving until I was 12 years old. Always the same, with the same thrills the same expectations, the same challenges. Not completely happy, since there were always tensions between my grandmother and my father, with my mother taking her mother's part, but still comforting in its predictability, its sameness.

Sameness is what the season lacks for me this year. We are in Malaysia, only three weeks into a nearly two-year stint. We left New England just before the snow flew, and landed two days later in 80 degree weather complete with palm trees and geckos. We know no one, have no family to spend the day with, no turkey, no traditional china or serving bowls, no pumpkin for pies, no Jack Frost nipping at our noses, none of the trappings which make the day FEEL like Thanksgiving. No one else even KNOWS it is Thanksgiving, and my husband will be working all day Thursday and the next day. There are not even any Black Friday sales to avoid.

So this year we can celebrate the day with true thankfulness. All the usual trappings which distract us from the day's original purpose are missing, and all that is left is the name and the history of this day. We can perhaps feel a bit what the founders of the feast felt as they gave thanks far from home and loved ones in a strange land with strangers for guests. We can practice being thankful when it does not please us to be so, and thus capture more of the true meaning of the day than perhaps ever before. I don't think tomorrow will feel like Thanksgiving at all, but I hope it will live up to its name anyway.