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| Happy Thanksgiving |
Thanksgiving is a special day for me and for millions of others. I remember many Thanksgivings with family, going back sixty years or more, to childhood Thanksgivings in Joplin, Missouri or Stockton, California, surrounded by parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings, with a big turkey on the table with all the trimmings. The days were growing increasingly cold and short in a world multicolored by dying leaves and filled with the familiar smells of autumn: the sweet fragrance of dying grasses, pungent wood smoke from chimneys, the musty smell of dead leaves raked into piles.
In school as children, we always marked the day with pilgrims and Indians and turkeys, cut out of construction paper and pasted together, or drawn with color crayons, the images pinned to classroom walls. As wee lads and lasses in the second grade, I remember singing "Over the River and Through the Woods," a song that made the day seem even more magical:
Over the River and Through the Woods:
Over the river, and through the woods,
To Grandmother's house we go;
the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river, and through the woods—
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose
as over the ground we go.
Over the river, and through the woods—
and straight through the barnyard gate,
We seem to go extremely slow,
it is so hard to wait!
Over the river, and through the woods—
now Grandmother's cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!
******
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and may it be as memorable and as special to you as it has long been to me.
6 comments:
We do indeed have so many blessings.
Yesterday, politics did not rear its head at the dinner table, thank God. The majority of us at my neighbors' dinner table are conservatives, but two present were Obamabots. For once, the Obamabots keep their damn mouths shut.
That's good. We have one family in our larger family of brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces, etc. who are Obamabots. They didn't show up this year as they had obligations elsewhere. In any case, I am sick of politics for the time being. I am just turning my attention to other things for the time being. I've been asked to play bass for veterans' celebration in ten days and am looking forward to it. I was contacted by a fabulous singer friend (a lady) to come here her jazz band play this Sunday at a jazz club and will go if the other band doesn't practice on that day. The country belongs to the far left for the time being, so let them wreck it. Meanwhile, I will enjoy friends, family and life in general as much as I can.
I plan to do more reading -- pleasure reading.
I'm getting burned out with politics. I feel powerless now that Obama has been re-elected. I know that my feeling is unrealistic as I never "had power." Still, that's the way my heart hurts now.
Enjoy that veterans' celebration. That's something worthwhile!
I am getting around to this late, but Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. It was a sad day for our family, as it was the first Thanksgiving since Mom passed away in February. I was used to deer hunting until noon and then coming in to eat at Mom and Dad's. I sat and cried in the woods as I thought about her.
I feel powerless now that Obama has been re-elected.
I feel exactly the same way. What's the point of obsessing over politics at this point in time? Eventually I will return to the fray, but right now I need a good long rest.
Sorry to hear that you lost your mom, Larry. I know how it feels to lose a parent. My father passed away in June of 1991, and the following July 4th, as I was watching fireworks in the night sky, I was fraught with the awful realization that it was the first July 4th of my life when I didn't have my father.
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