Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that everyone is enjoying their time off and gets to eat lots turkey. Turkey dinner is my favourite meal and Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday! There is something about Thanksgiving that just makes it feel different from the other holidays and I’m not really sure why. Maybe it is because it is cozy because the weather has started to cool down and the leaves have started to change. Maybe it is because you don’t have to worry about buying everyone gifts before hand. I love spending time with my family and Thanksgiving has always been very family orientated for me.
When I was a kid my Granny had a wood stove in her house. It was in the kitchen and it was best in the middle of winter when you would come in from the cold. You could take off your winter coat and head right for the stove. It would warm you up in no time. However, to keep the wood stove burning all winter you needed to have a lot of wood. This is when Thanksgiving came into play.
My Granny would have many cords of wood delivered before Thanksgiving and then on the Saturday of the long weekend the family would get up, head into Granny’s and chop and stack firewood all day. When I say the family I mean everyone…Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, we all went. There would be two or three people chopping the wood and then everyone else would throw the wood into a trailer and then, when it was full, wheel it into the garage to unload and stack.
As a kid I didn’t really get to involved in the work, mostly I got to run around with my cousins getting up to all sorts of shenanigans. It was also a weekend full of Hockey Tournaments. Everyone took their turns taking whichever kid had a game to the area. It was a busy day. I always remember it as fun. Of course as a kid not doing much of the work I would have found time with my cousins fun but even though the adults were working hard I remember talking and laughing and smiles.
One of the best parts was every time you came into the house you could smell the turkey cooking. My Granny is one of the best cooks in the world. Her turkey dinners where some of the best I have ever had. She doesn’t cook any of the big meals anymore but even at 84 she is still one of my all-time favourite cooks. While everyone worked outside all day Granny worked inside all day. I can smell the turkey now.
Once the work was done everyone took turns showering and putting on something nice for dinner. Then we would all converge in the living room, which was the only room that was big enough to fit the entire family. Granny had set up a big long table and made place cards to let everyone know where they were to sit. One thing that I always liked was that there was no kids table, we were all mixed in with the adults. It made for fun and lively (and loud) conversation. I would often be sat next to my Uncle B who is a little bit more quiet then the rest of the family and we would give each other looks and makes comments to each other no one else could hear through the meal. My Aunt L would wait until you were done eating and if you had left anything she would take it off your plate with a big grin…we shouldn’t throw that out.
After dinner the clean up happened. A few people would work on cleaning up the dishes because in those days we did not have a dishwasher. Even though everyone was tired and full and there were still work to be done there was still an air of joy throughout the house. Sometimes during dishes was when you got the best jokes out people. Everyone was so happy that we had this day to spend together.
As the years passed Granny got rid of the wood stove and while we still got together for Thanksgiving dinner it was the first step towards changing family time. Now all the cousins are grown up and many have kids of their own. A few years back Granny stopped doing Thanksgiving dinner and then she moved into a condo. We stopped having big family get togethers and we don’t see each other as much as we used too, but I know that my family still loves me.
Now Thanksgiving looks a little bit different but it is still all about family. My brother, sister-in-law, nephew, niece, and Auntie K all drive up to my parents house for the weekend. Granny comes to our place for dinner now and we all take a walk through the bush instead of chopping wood. It is a weekend full of family and love. I think that is why I love Thanksgiving so much, spending time with family. Family is the most important thing to me. I don’t know what I would do without them.
This year I am thankful that we are all happy, healthy and working (or retired in my parents case). It has been a very difficult year and a half and I am so glad that we have made it through and we have made it through together.