Well, Mama, another Thanksgiving has come... and gone... our third one without you and it's still hard, mostly down to moments now. 2008 was the hardest, of course, you had only been gone two months then and we weren't really sure how to survive our first "real" holiday with our family reduced by the main character. We muddle through with lots of tears and lots of laughter and lots of memories.
Last year, 2009, Daddy had just announced to us that he was getting remarried, we had just met her, but she didn't spend Thanksgiving with us, so we gathered 'round once again and held on tightly to each other, somehow knowing there would never be another holiday that we felt like a complete family again.
This year Daddy and "the wife" chose not to come to the family dinner... "the wife" cooked for her side of the family and they stayed away. Jeff and Kevin, Hannah and her new boyfriend, Nick, and Caleb and Kaila came. There were eight of us at dinner... the food was great... Kevin made pumpkin pies like you used to.
Hannah and Nick came down Wednesday night so Han could help me with the cooking. It was a wonderful visit with her. There were tearful moments and the oddest times... who would have known how tightly memories are linked to things like food. When I opened up the Lynn Church cookbook to the page with your pumpkin roll recipe I had to brush the tears out of my eyes in order to read the recipe. I've shared that recipe around to a lot of folks recently and it has a whole new group of fans...
Bless Hannah's heart, she was helping make pumpkin rolls and was flipping the pages of that old cookbook to the page with the recipe so she could make the frosting this morning and she happened to pass the "Glorified Banana Pudding" recipe... she choked up and the tears flowed for a few minutes... she couldn't believe how fast and hard the emotion caught her on that one!
I made Jeff a Red Velvet cake for his birthday, which fell on Thanksgiving Day this year. He cut the first piece and took a bite of his favorite cake... he said to me, "I tell you one thing, THIS is the closest you've ever come to this tasting like Mom's red velvet." His eyes filled up with tears and his voice broke...
Like I said, who knew all those simple, favorite recipes were so tightly linked to our memories of you?
And by the way, your favorite food of Thanksgiving, the dressing, was the best I've ever made this year... you would definitely have taken a big plate of it home with you!
You always said Thanksgiving was your favorite holiday, because you have friends and family and simply a feast without all the hustle and bustle and stress that those other holidays bring... this year was like that... low stress, good food, good fellowship, good times.
We ate, laughed, cried a little, played some hilarious video games, took a walk to the lake where Hugh took some great pictures of us with his new camera. Everybody left pretty much at the same time and now the house feels so very empty... if we lived close enough to the mountains, Hugh said he would take me for a ride on the Parkway... ah well, a movie, some computer time, and leftovers and we'll survive the "empty house" syndrome.
I love you, Mama, and I really, really missed you on Thanksgiving.
