We Gather Together

The other day I was cleaning after cooking Shepards Pie for dinner and broke my casserole dish.  This was not just any dish, but my favorite dish.  Murphy’s Law, and my mother, always said that you never break things you hate to use. 

My mother gave me this dish ten years ago for my first Thanksgiving away from my family and I was cooking a meal for my friends for the first time.  Fortunately for them, I had ordered my turkey precooked, so there was no chance of that dish going wrong.  I love to cook, but the thought of taking on a Turkey is right up there with reaching the summit of Everest.  This casserole dish, however, was used for something I could master:  my green bean casserole.  I had bought Stove Top Stuffing, which is always a success, and had no trouble making sweet potatoes with marshmallows.  As my friends gathered around the very small table in the kitchen of my house, we were grateful we had each other to share our holiday as we were all away from our families.

As I looked at my broken dish, I was brought back to my mom’s kitchen the night before Thanksgiving. This was always a busy time in our house and I loved to watch my mom work.  I would help her lay out the slices of bread so they could get stale overnight, making them perfect for her homemade stuffing.  I would watch as she washed the Turkey and prepped it to be roasted in the very early morning.  I was mesmerized by all the vegetables she would chop, all the things she would remember us needing for the all the food she would cook. We would set the tables: one for the adults and one for the kids.  My favorite part was when she would make the dessert.  No, this was not pumpkin or pecan pie.  This was what we call “Purple Stuff”.  This is a raspberry and blackberry Jell-o mixed with grape juice and crushed pineapple served with a cream cheese whipped cream on top.  My mom was, and still is, a master at the Thanksgiving meal.

There was a family that would join us, which we now consider our family.  Their mom and mine had worked together when we first moved to Texas.  They knew we had no family nearby and had invited us over to their house for Thanksgiving, and then we reciprocated with inviting them for Christmas.  The next year started our tradition of my parents hosting Thanksgiving.  The first year it was only three of them, their younger son had not yet been born.  Years later, it would be their younger son who would name my mom’s Jell-O-o dessert “Purple Stuff”.  Sometimes my uncle and cousins would come out to join us.  I always loved seeing them and catching up on our lives.

Our Thanksgiving Day tradition would be for them to come over around noon so we could eat before the Dallas Cowboys played.  Growing up in Dallas, this was an essential part of our festivities.  My mom’s turkey would always be the perfect amount of juicy and tender.  Along with the turkey, we would have my mom’s stuffing, dinner rolls, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, green bean casserole, and broccoli cheese rice casserole.  (Are you hungry now?) J After our big meal, the dads would watch The Game, and nap a bit throughout, and the moms and kids would head out to see a movie.  Afterwards we would come back home, heat up leftovers and make turkey sandwiches followed by pie.

I believe our first Thanksgiving together had to be around 1979 or 1980 (I’m sure someone in my family will correct me on this).  We must have had 20-25 Thanksgiving meals together. Now all of us kids are grown with families and our parents are now grandparents.  Our lives have gone in all different kinds of directions, but our hearts always come back to the memories of our holidays together.  Living overseas, people always ask me if I am homesick at Christmas.  But, truthfully, I am homesick at Thanksgiving, as no country in Europe celebrates it. I miss the hugs as we said hello and good-bye, the liveliness of conversations around the table, and the really good food. I am so very thankful for all the work my mother did making Thanksgiving so special to all of us, and for all the work she did to make it something we could count on.  This year I will attempt to make my very first whole turkey and attempt to make it a holiday for my family here in Germany.  I hope I can pull it off at least half as well as my mother could.

My wish for all of you, as you gather together, is that the memories you are making are etched in your hearts so that you will have fondness to look back upon.  For those who are separated from their loved ones, whether due to distance or heaven, I hope your hearts are filled with times shared around the Thanksgiving table.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!