The Ghosts of Thanksgivings Past

Yesterday I visited my mom and, as I filed her nails and polished them a pretty pink color, I talked about the Thanksgivings we had shared in the past. I told her I was feeling nostalgic and missed some of those holidays from long ago.

Mom just nodded and smiled at me. I truly don’t think she has any memory of Thanksgiving – last year or ten years ago. Or fifty years ago, for that matter.  She just attempts to make us feel better when she nods her head in agreement.

I asked her to take her rings off so I could clean them and, while she slowly wrestled the engagement ring my dad gave her off her left hand and my grandmother’s ring off her right, I kept up a light patter. Mom gets nervous these days when no one is talking. And she certainly doesn’t start any conversations herself.

So I asked her about Nanna’s ring. It has my grandmother’s engagement stone in it, but it also has another diamond – that of her friend Frances McCartin who had bequeathed it to my grandmother. And then Nanna had had her setting changed to accommodate both diamonds.

I knew the story, but I asked mom about it hoping that she would remember. She just said that the name sounded familiar.

So I changed the subject because I felt sad that mom’s memories are so faded they are virtually nonexistent anymore.

Later on at home, as I was walking Maggie Minx, I began reminiscing about those holidays.

I remember when I was a kid, my grandparents would split their holidays between their daughters’ families. We were in Ohio and our aunt and uncle and cousins lived in Connecticut, so it was impossible for Nanna and Grandpa to see us all for both holidays. One year we’d see them at Thanksgiving and the next year they’d visit us at Christmas.

Sometimes, we’d travel to that state up north to visit our Michigan cousins for the holiday. The bonus was that around Thanksgiving was my cousin Dorothy’s birthday, so we’d always have that celebration added in.

My mom used to tell the story about how that year she had to pinch-hit for my Aunt Babbie who had to abandon her hosting duties to birth a baby.

When I was away at college, coming home for Thanksgiving meant I could visit my friends as much as it was about family.

Thanksgiving my junior year at Ohio State was a memorable one. That year, I hitched a ride with one of the secretaries in the Metallurgical Engineering department at Ohio State where I was a student office assistant. Cecily was driving close to Alliance to pick up her daughters from college and bring them back to Columbus, so she said she’d be glad to give me a ride.

My dad was to pick me up from a pre-determined spot. So I loaded up her van with all the essentials I’d need for the break, including an entire bag of shoes. I had comfy shoes. I had shoes for dancing. And I had basic black flats for everything else. Since there was a lot of snow on the ground, on my feet I wore big clunky snow boots.

This footwear turned out to be a blessing because what Cecily didn’t tell me was that her van did not have a working heater. My first clue as to what kind of a ride I was getting was when she picked me up from my campus apartment and there was a puffy sleeping bag on the passenger seat. Cecily told me to hop in and zip myself into the bag or else I’d freeze.

She wasn’t kidding. Within the first 10 minutes of our drive, I turned into a human popsicle. My teeth were chattering. My nose was running. And my hands and feet felt like frozen hamburger.

By the time we reached the hand-off spot where my dad was waiting in his beautiful heated car, I was near tears because I was so cold. Only I was afraid to let the tears fall as I knew they'd freeze on my face.

So we transferred my bags into my dad’s trunk, said a quick, shivering “ggggoood-bye!” to Cecily and took off. When we reached my parents’ house in Alliance and unloaded dad’s car, I realized I’d left the bag of shoes in Cecily’s trunk. And all I had to wear were those big clunky snow boots.

How was I going to go out dancing with Diana in big clunky snow boots??

My mom took pity on her poor, half-frozen daughter, gave her a little cash and sent her shopping for a pair of shoes that would get her through the break. And what sort of footwear did said daughter choose? Why, a pair of purple suede boots, of course.

Mom just rolled her eyes when I came home with those boots wearing a big goofy grin on my face. I loved those boots. And to this day, I still remember them. And it makes me smile.

There were some Thanksgivings I didn’t really want to come home. I was dating someone and wanted to stay in Columbus, or I had been invited to gatherings that friends were having. But my parents insisted that I come home.

I might have been a little put out at the time…but now I’m glad I went. Because those are the memories I cherish. Thanksgivings spent with my family.

One year, my cousins Brian and Joy and their two kids drove from their home near Pittsburgh to spend Thanksgiving with us, which was memorable as we rarely had extended family nearby and able to visit.

In later years, my parents started coming to Columbus to visit me – or we’d fly together to visit my sister and her family. But we were always together.

And then, a couple years ago, mom and dad were slated to spend Thanksgiving with us in Columbus. I was planning to drive to Alliance and pick them up. And then I’d take them back home after the weekend.

But dad called me the day before and cancelled. He didn’t really give me any explanation and I was pretty upset with him. I didn’t want them spending the day alone. I knew dad wouldn’t cook and mom, by this point, was pretty deep in her dementia and never ventured into the kitchen on her own. So I was worried about them

Plus, I’d bought food for the whole weekend, including the things mom and dad liked that neither Vince nor I ate or drank. So I was a little upset about that, too.

Later, I realized that dad had really wanted to come visit, but mom refused to leave her rocking chair. And that put dad in an awkward position. He couldn’t tell me the truth since he was sitting a foot away from mom.

Later still, I felt so badly about my attitude toward him. And I apologized, but dad – being the kind-hearted man he was – didn’t need my apology; he’d already forgiven me. Rather, he felt he owed me the apology.

And it makes me miss him all the more.

Yes, I’m feeling nostalgic about Thanksgivings spent with family when we were all healthy and whole. And, even though I’m grateful that I have Vince by my side to spend the day with, Thanksgivings will never be the same.

So I wish you a happy day. Whether you spend the day with parents, grandparents, cousins, children, grandchildren or friends – make it a good one. And cherish the memories. 

The Holiday Frenzy Season is Here

So Halloween is over and November has begun. And so has the Christmas music, and the holiday television and radio ads. It’s like they’re telling us, Hurry up, people, you’re running behind. GO. SHOPPING. NOW!

Yuck.

I didn’t want Halloween to end because I knew the holiday frenzy would begin immediately thereafter. I’m surprised I’m not feeling pressured to put up our Christmas tree already.

Over the years I have been known to shop for Christmas gifts throughout the year so as not to become immersed too heavily in the holiday shopping madness, but this year has been different. I haven’t purchased that first gift, card, bow or stamp, although my little mind has been churning through ideas and possibilities. Of course, until I start an actual list, the “process” cannot truly begin.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy the whole holiday season. I do. It’s just that there’s way too much hype about it.

And, heck, the poor Thanksgiving holiday gets lost in the process.

I suppose turkeys everywhere would rejoice at this news, except that somehow, some way turkeys still manages to get purchased at grocery stores everywhere by the fourth Thursday in November. Sure, we have to push aside the Christmas hams to search for the perfect turkey to feed 18 people and we are forced to listen to that incessant canned Christmas music piped through the loudspeakers while having an internal debate over serving yams or mashed potatoes or both this year. It’s distracting, I tell you.

Okay, that whole paragraph is a lie. For me, anyway. 1) I’ve never prepared a turkey for 18 people. I’ve never even prepared a turkey for two people. I’m not crazy about turkey. 2) We don’t have ham for Christmas. 3) Yams, while healthier than your standard mashed potato, are orange. And I don’t eat orange food. And, yes, that pretty much involves all orange food, including pumpkin pie. And orange Skittles. You have to throw away orange Skittles.

Uh oh. After careful review of the multitudes of orange-colored foods out there, it occurs to me that I DO eat carrots. Oops. Lied again.

The only thing about that paragraph that was true (for me, anyway), is that we DO have to listen to canned Christmas music over the loudspeakers at the grocery store before we’ve even experienced the happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Of course, what sort of music could they possibly play to celebrate Thanksgiving? I think we only have “Over the River and Through The Woods.” And wouldn’t that get old really fast? Horse-driven sleighs are, after all, a rather outdated mode of transportation these days. And nobody has written any new songs about heading to grandma’s in a Kia, for example. Even after all these years. Go figure, huh? Probably there isn’t a big market for hit Thanksgiving songs.

The other reason the Thanksgiving holiday gets the short shrift is that shoppers everywhere have to gear up for the craziness that is Black Friday. The cooks in the family have to arise at the crack of dawn on Thanksgiving Day to prepare the meal that their family is required to eat at 10AM. And the shoppers in the family avoid turkey entirely at Thanksgiving dinner because it contains L-tryptophan and they don’t want to be sleepy and miss their 9PM alarm. (And by “shoppers,” of course, I mean “women.” Men spend Thanksgiving watching football and drinking beer and eating leftover turkey sandwiches. They think the shoppers in the family are crazy to go shopping at 1 o’clock in the morning.

I blame the retail industry. Over the years, stores have competed for our holiday dollars by opening earlier and earlier the day after Thanksgiving. It started out that stores opened at 6AM on Black Friday. Then other stores started opening at 5AM. And it continued on until now you see store managers, with napkins still tucked under their chins holding plates filled with turkey and stuffing and marshmallow-y yams in one hand while they unlock the store doors with the other.

Shoppers, meanwhile, have been congregating outside the store in the cold for hours. Eventually they start pushing and shoving each other to get the prime entry positions. You’d think the store was giving away pure gold bars or something.

The closer time gets to store opening, shoppers assume the typical bull stampede stance. This includes snorting to intimidate the other shoppers and stamping and pawing the ground in anticipation so as soon as the doors open, they can rush inside to buy Tattoo Barbie or the newest Wii game before the other shoppers can get their grubby hands on the goods.

And you know what happens as soon as the doors open, don’t you? The slower-moving store managers who can’t step aside fast enough don’t make it. All that is left after the crowd has surged inside is a little smear of yam on the floor. And the napkin. That’s it.

It’s very risky to be a store manager in charge of the keys to the door on Black Friday. I hope they get combat pay.

Thus far, I have avoided joining in on the Black Friday madness. I feel sorry for the dear departed store managers for one thing. And, for another, there is no toy, sweater or iPod worth getting up for in the middle of the night. Not even if they gave it to me free.

So I say, RELAX, PEOPLE! You’ve got plenty of time. But probably you should think about putting up your tree this weekend. Unless, of course, you never took it down after last Christmas. Then you’re good. Instead, you can spend the weekend picking the orange Skittles out of your kids’ stash of Halloween candy. And maybe think about writing a Thanksgiving song with the word "Kia" in it.

Thanksgiving is Over. Now on to Christmas!

It’s 9:15AM on Black Friday and there are probably scads of people whose day began more than 7 hours ago. If so, I hope you snagged all got those great bargains and deals that I couldn’t possibly hope to get if I were to walk into Target or Best Buy at a far more reasonable time of, oh, say, noon-ish.

But that’s okay – you can gloat if you want. I imagine anyone who is dedicated enough to set their alarm early enough to be at a store’s 3AM opening on Black Friday deserves their moment of glory.

Meanwhile I was snug in my bed struggling to breathe.

Yep, caught another cold. Seems like I JUST got over one, although if I actually check the calendar, it was over seven months ago. It doesn’t matter, colds make me miserable and they seem like they drag on endlessly.

I am now of the opinion, by the way, that Vitamin C and Airborne and all that other stuff you take as a preventative measure is just a bunch of hooey.

For a couple months now Vince and I have been taking a Vitamin C tablet both in the morning and at bedtime in the hopes that there will be some super-strong invisible Vitamin C shield protecting us from every tiny germ sprayed by some errant passerby who didn’t cover his mouth when he sneezed.

So either the sneezer had some super-strong germs, or my Vitamin C shield has a hole in it.

So I sit here with a box of Kleenex perpetually attached to my fingertips (which makes it a little hard to type), and I sneeze and cough and whine a lot about how lousy I feel.

Fortunately, the Day-Quil and Ny-Quil seem to be doing the trick and I’ve been able to sleep mostly through the night and am not too bad during the day…so perhaps my invisible Vitamin C shield is struggling to cover me – just a little bit.

Ah well. One cannot whine too much about one’s cold. (Well, one could – but people really don’t want to hear all the details), so I’ll have to move on to something else.

Like how I feel this incredible urge to hurry up and get the place decorated for the holidays – pronto. With radio stations like Sunny 95 already playing Christmas music and this Black Friday business and holiday decorations and Christmas lights already out on front lawns and strung up over garages, well, I’m feeling a little behind the times.

A friend of ours from Denmark remarked that Americans are funny because we’re in such a rush to get our Christmas decorations and trees up. She said that they do not put up their Christmas tree until December 24th…and by January 1st, it is gone. This is because they only use real trees. Artificial trees do not signify Christmas to our Danish friend.

Well, I can understand that. The heavenly smell of a freshly cut evergreen tree totally signifies Christmas. However, as a formerly single woman for many, MANY years, the idea of wrestling a real tree into a stand and taking the time to water it every day so it didn’t turn into a pathetic Charlie Brown-type of Christmas tree, never appealed to me. Besides, I love watching the lights at night on my Christmas tree and one week wouldn’t be long enough.

Theoretically, artificial trees could stay up all year long. Not that I’d want to be known as the Crazy Lady who has an artificial tree in her living room decorated with pastel lights and Easter Eggs in April or red, white and blue lights and American flags in July. I’m sure people will find reasons to call me the Crazy Lady soon enough and I don’t need a year-round decorated tree in my living room to give anyone additional ammunition.

Nevertheless, I am sure that before this weekend is over, the tree will be up and the lights will be out and the gifts will (hopefully) be wrapped and placed under the tree. I love all things sparkly and Christmas is the absolute best time of the year for me.

Let’s just hope the Day-Quil continues to work its magic and I don’t give in to this cold before the job is done.

So this crazy lady is signing off to go on a mission and untangle some lights. Provided, of course, she can find the box she stored them in last January!