“Thank you for the food we eat, thank you for our family, thank you for our friends.” Can we eat now?
Thanksgiving is just around the corner, the day where friends and families gather to celebrate the harvest, enjoy each other’s company and to feast together. Breaking bread is the timeless and most effective way to bring people together and share the common interest of joyful eating.
We will feast on a meal that takes hours to prepare and can be devoured in minutes! I think it would be nice if there was an eat slowly theme of the day, and the concept of savouring your food emphasized. Look at all the beautiful colours, the rich golds and oranges of the yams, sweet potatoes, squash, the shades of green of the brussels sprouts, broccoli, salads, the creamy colour of the potatoes, turkey, pink of the ham, reds of the cranberry sauce. Smell the aroma of the foods blending together — and the turkey. The colours and smells of the harvest, admire them before you devour them. Of course tasting is another sense enjoyed.
As a child growing up on a farm, Thanksgiving was a big deal. My grandpa came to our house, and so did our aunts and uncles, and sometimes the neighbours. Extra tables were built in the living room — plywood on saw horses with table cloths, lovely in a pinch. Kids at one end or separate table and adults at another. My brothers would fill their cheeks with mashed potatoes, make strange faces, talk like Donald Duck, be goofs and I loved them for it. I mixed children into the sitting areas in my own home because I wanted to hear their stories when we asked “What are you thankful for?” of every one.
My parents would work for hours preparing the meal. My father mostly since he was the better cook. My mom was an amazing woman with multiple talents and cooking wasn’t one of them. The positive outcome of this was that all six of her kids are great cooks so we could keep her out of the kitchen. In hindsight it could have been a ploy so she could take meal preparation off her lengthy list of chores. Naaah, she was just bad.
All of the food would have come from our farm or a neighbours except for the pumpkin pies from the A and P, smothered in whip cream so they were delicious. I buy mine at Davisons, so they at least look homemade. The 100 mile diet was alive and well in my family, in fact essential to our survival as a big family.
There was always a feeling of something special, different than Christmas, because that could be the excitement of gifts; Thanksgiving was about the gift of family and friends. We put on our good clothes, we played games, we ran around bouncing with enthusiasm to see our guests at our house. Our grandpa was a great storyteller and would always tell us kids a great tale or two as we sat at his feet, wide-eyed, listening to stories of exploring and building Huron County.
With my family the feeling has been the same as we gathered in our home or at friends to celebrate the many gifts we have and to enjoy the harvest, friendships and family. My parents would get this dreamy-eyed look on their face as we gathered at the table sitting patiently in anticipation, and look at us with such love. I understand that look now that I am a mother: contentment, joy, at this moment all is right in our world.
And we will ask the question again as we do every year “What are you thankful for.” My mom, my brother, my friends, this food and my new skis.
Michele Blais writes about family for The Morning Star.
