Thanksgiving -- Then and Now

As with all things, there is a time of dormancy, a time of germination, a time of fruition and harvest. We must be patient with these things in our heart. We must develop patience and an open mind---a very open mind.

                                                      ---Julia Cameron

As Thanksgiving approaches this week, memories crowd my mind. I am taken back to when I was in my teens. My brothers and older sister, June, were married and had children. June and Stan had arrived for the holidays and would be with us all week.

Mother worked hard cooking for everyone, but it made her deliciously happy. Having her kids around lit up her life. Every meal was festive as we gathered around the dining table, not the smaller table where Gay and I usually ate with Mother and Daddy.

Stan, who was a native of South Dakota, had come into our family like a carpenter bee. He drilled through the barriers of diversity and made himself one of us. He tunneled into the hearts of my mother, my father and my brothers and they admired and adored him. Gay and I had fallen in love with him when we were little kids. He made us feel so special.

Our Thanksgiving dinner consisted traditionally of roasted turkey, a large pan of cornbread dressing with oysters, and one smaller pan for those of us who didn’t like oysters. June made a special cranberry relish, but I favored the canned jellied variety. Always a picky eater when I was a kid, I have changed somewhat, but am not too adventurous even now.

 If you like the fresh made cranberry sauce, you must read this post and see these wonderful pictures at My Carolina Kitchen.

My sisters-in-law, all good cooks, brought side dishes, casseroles, vegetables, and desserts. Salita made the best pies and cakes. With such an array of sweets, we often had a taste of each of them. Yvonne’s sweet potato casserole made with brown sugar could have taken center stage on the dessert table, but was ladled out beside the turkey and dressing. 

With the addition of a small table, our dining table seated fourteen adults. The younger children sat together in the family room. The women bustled around, in and out of the kitchen, making sure we had a correct number of places set with proper eating utensils and napkins. Someone took a head count for iced tea – sweet, of course. Nothing was formal at our house, but we didn’t use paper plates or plastic forks, not until many years later when the third generation proved too many for mother’s china and flatware collection.

After Barry and I married, we wanted to spend the holidays with my family and with his parents. After our meal with my folks, we climbed into the car and headed to Rockmart, Georgia about three hours away, where we had another large dinner cooked by his mother, Helen, who was as different from my mother as night is from day. Helen set her round antique table with lovely china, real silver, and cloth napkins. No boisterous children or loud conversation marred our meal. She prepared one dessert, usually a cake with ice cream and we ate that later, in the den, with coffee. We went to bed stuffed with food and with love.

Barry Beall and his mother, Helen Alexander Beall

Football was always a large factor at Thanksgiving. The men in my family were huge Georgia football fans. It was hard to tear them away from the TV if we happened to be eating at the same time the game was on. I can remember when they would have two TV sets on, watching two games at once. This was before DVRs.

Looking back, I realize how we took for granted the good life we had. We were all healthy and happy. We couldn’t have enjoyed a meal more, the laughter, and the closeness of loved ones. While I might have been aware that one or the other of my brothers’ wives was in a snit about something, I was grateful that all were on their best behavior and never marred our day of Thanksgiving.

Now they are gone, my parents, Helen, June and Stan, Yvonne, and three of my brothers. Now also gone is my husband, and I am left adrift to find thankfulness and gratitude where I can. But I do. I am grateful for all those wonderful memories, for the love I shared with my family, and I’ll always have that.

I am thankful for Gay, my youngest sister, who arrived today. Tomorrow we will join old friends for a traditional dinner of turkey and all the fixings. We will laugh and tell stories about the old days, and express our thanks for the years we have had together and the love we have for each other.

Life has changed. Everything is different, but I am thankful I can find joy in what is now.

I wish for you, my faithful readers, a happy Thanksgiving wherever you may be.

Thanksgiving, Family, Food, and Days Gone By

Part of the Council Clan at the Big House

With Thanksgiving coming up, my thoughts turn to the holidays of the past. It was a big, big day in our home where I lived with my parents and my younger sister, Gay. Big sister June and her husband Stan, and their little girls arrived the evening before Turkey day. When we heard their car drive up, it was celebration time. "They're here. June and Stan are here!"

Mother had been busy all week sprucing up the house and buying extra groceries. The twenty pound turkey had been thawing for three days.

Wednesday night my brothers, their wives and children came. The noise level rose and became a cacophony of sounds with the greetings, hugs, laughter and nine kids running in and out of the back door of the farm house. November weather in south Georgia is perfect for playing outside. The sticky summer humidity dissipates. Evenings turn crisp and cool.

On Thanksgiving day, Mother woke early to start cooking the turkey and the cornbread dressing for a noon day meal. We girls set the tables and filled glasses with ice for the sweet tea everyone drank except Daddy. His place was set with a huge cup of coffee.

We set two tables -- one for adults and one for the children. Mother made oyster dressing in her old yellow casserole dish, deep and large as a roaster, but she also made a smaller pan of dressing without oysters just for me. That was the kind of mother she was.

We piled our plates with turkey, giblet gravy and dressing, sweet potato souffle with nuts and marshmallows, jellied cranberry sauce, green beans, Lima beans, salads of all kinds and rolls or biscuits.

Three or four different desserts lined the buffet. Mother made sure we had chocolate -- chocolate pie or chocolate cake. Someone usually brought pecan pie or lemon pie. Mother also made a delicious banana pudding.

No one worried about his waistline that day. We sat around the dining table which had been stretched to its limits with two wide leaves, and we talked all afternoon. Occasionally one of us got up and helped ourselves to more dessert. We caught up on all the news from all the families.

Daddy withdrew along with some of the brothers to sit before the TV and pull for his favorite football team.

On Friday after Thanksgiving, we didn't head for the stores to shop. Mother and Stan pulled out all the spices, candied fruit and pecans and began the ritual of making the annual fruitcakes. No one else was allowed to help, and therefore, now that Mother and Stan are gone, no one knows the recipe. Once the cakes began cooking in Mother's large pressure cooker, the aroma of Christmas permeated our house. Mother's recipe required bourbon, and she and Stan poured some for the cake and a sip or two for themselves. She claimed the bourbon was the ingredient that kept the cakes moist. I think it kept the cooks happy, too.


When done, and cooled, the cakes were wrapped and stored in the cupboard. Once a week for the next month, Mother unwrapped the cakes and poured a little more bourbon over them; and wrapped them again. They would not be eaten until we gathered for Christmas dinner when Stan, June and the girls would be home again.

On Sunday, at the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend, June and her family drove away and the party was over. The only remnant left of Thanksgiving was the bare turkey carcass. Quiet settled on the house like a somber spirit. Mother, missing her oldest daughter already, sat down in her favorite chair, no doubt tired from constant cooking and dish washing.

I sensed Mother's sadness, and I felt a little sorrow also. Perhaps she knew what I didn't know at the time, but I've learned. Those family holidays together were more precious than I, so young at the time, could ever imagine. But she knew. And now I know.