I took only two photographs at Thanksgiving dinner last year and this is one of them: Mom and Dad, at the table, in their usual seats, with two of Mom’s homemade pies: cocoanut custard and pumpkin. Ours will be a quiet celebration this year, our first without Dad. It’ll be Mom and my sister and Seth and me. There may have been more than the five of us last year; I really don’t recall. The year before that, we were all in Illinois, seated at a table for 17. Thanksgiving is like this––you never know year to year what it might be like.
Even though it is just the four of us, Mom and Marietta, my sister, have been cooking up a storm and they’ll be roasting a turkey that is just shy of 20 pounds. We don’t know how to cook small in my family. There will be leftovers and plenty of them.
We gather and we will certainly remember those who are not with us, but we will gather and appreciate that we are there for each other. For us, it’s been a year mixed with good and bad, a year that helps us truly appreciate our blessings. And so we give thanks for them and for each other. And I give thanks for you, too, for being with me on this journey each year around the sun, for reading every now and then and for letting me know that you do. I can’t thank you enough. From my family to yours: Happy Thanksgiving.
John