All I ever wanted was for my children to have the wonderful experiences I had on Thanksgiving, growin' up. My Mama Mattie lived a couple of houses over and the whole family gathered at her house for Thanksgiving dinner at 12 noon sharp. Sometimes there would be over 40 of us! She would be cooking for days and stayed up all night the night before cooking that giant bird. We'd have children from birth to teens running around outside with some of the adults joining in to get us involved in fun family activities. Yessirree....My Mama Mattie would do it up right! More food than could possibly be eaten, always with a surprise dessert to go along with the many other pies and cakes. Card tables would be set up from the front of the house to the back...the whole house filled up with family and no room to move unless we went outside. No frills...the only decoration might be turkeys made out of pine cones made by the grandchildren. Just good food, family and lots of laughs. I can't bring up a single negative memory from those days...unless it was Uncle Percy always mashing a biscuit before he'd pass it to Uncle Bickett...but that's not negative...it's one of my favorite memories!
After Mama Mattie passed we all split up and had our own smaller Thanksgivings. My mother would do her best to fix the special dishes that Mama Mattie had always cooked...but now it was for less than 6 folks. We had to move the feast to 6:00 because my brother and my daddy were usually hunting on Thanksgiving Day. It wasn't the same, but I watched my parents work hard to set up new traditions for their family. Along came marriage for me and my brother...then came 3 grandchildren. Now there were 9 of us. My mother's deal was she cooked and me and my sister-in-law cleaned everything up. Not a bad deal.. It seemed like we all got there just in time to eat and left as soon as the kitchen was cleaned up. It was nice to be with the family for Turkey and Dressin', but just not quite the same.
Later on, my mother was unable to cook the big meal. I took over and tried several years to get the family together while I cooked. Sometimes they could come and sometimes they couldn't. Gosh, things had changed!
After Mother passed, there was just me and the boys. Thanksgiving had changed...again. Hard as I tried it seemed like a burden for everybody to get through the meal, most of the time they had been invited to celebrate the holiday with someone else. I would cook and cook....we'd eat like there was no tomorrow...then all the leftovers would be packed up and everybody left. Sheeesh...what happened? Try as I might, I could never seem to pull together the "spirit" of Thanksgiving and provide the positive memories for my children that I had experienced.
Then I gave up. We started going out! My boys don't really care for the usual Thanksgiving fare, they usually just ate the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy.....So why cook all that other stuff just to make it look like Thanksgiving? Another fail.
Now, this year I can't get them to all come together and be satisfied with WHERE WE'RE GONNA EAT, WHAT THE RESTAURANT WILL BE SERVING, WHAT TIME...it seems to go on and on.
So I sit here with Thanksiving less than two weeks away. My oldest granddaughter is 4 1/2 hours away and it has fallen on me to be the one to pick her up on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and take her back on Sunday. Those two days will be completely gone...on the road. The rest of the family doesn't seem to care whether we have a meal together or not. The evil and selfish side of me is wanting to pick up my LouLou and keep on driving....in the other direction! Take her somewhere she's never been, get a hotel room and just enjoy her....eating out and doing something fun! But, the Mother in me knows that I'll drive straight up and straight back and once again have an unhappy family for Thanksgiving. The only one happy will be LouLou because she wants to see all of us SO bad. She is still innocent and without traditional expectations. This old gal wishes she could feel the same way!
Can't we just skip Thanksgiving this year? This is a holiday that has just gone downhill in my family, with no traditions that stuck, just another meal to get over with. I am not a Negative Nanny...but I sure am dreading the long Thanksgiving weekend coming up. I've spent two Thanksgivings with other families, without my family due to conflicts in their schedules. Instead of having an upbeat holiday, I found it depressing to sit with the happy families who were kind enough to include me. I've spent one Thanksgiving alone with LouLou...we cooked the whole meal.....and nobody came....but she didn't know the difference because she was too young to know what a tradition is supposed to be. We cooked, we ate, we met a new friend and went to the movies....we went to the Christmas Regatta and we checked out the early Christmas decorations some folks already had out.
MeeMaw is tired. Can we just skip Thanksgiving this year? Me and LouLou may just go skiing in the mountains!
Lordy....Why can't we all just dance?
Things will be better tomorrow! But until they do, won't you leave a comment?
