A STORY WORTH TELLING
“I’m thankful for every moment.”
— Al Green, singer and songwriter
The holiday season is the best. I’ve long contended Thanksgiving preceding Christmas is not coincidence. It’s a chance to be thankful for the most joyous season and ending the year on high note.
My blessings are many. And long is the list of things for which I am thankful. For the last few years, that’s included a conversation with a a business associate with whom I shared short Thanksgiving memories about our grandmothers.
While wrapping up business for the holiday week via email with Wachelle at the Dallas PR firm we used at the time, she said something that resonated with me for the rest of that day.
“We are scheduled for next week! Yay…” her response to my submissions read. I countered with the good news that we also had another couple weeks of social media programs in the works. “My grandmomma would say ... ‘Stop showing out,’” she replied!
“I like your grandmomma’s sayings,” I told her. “Mine was a wise woman for someone whose education went only to the eighth grade. She had a huge inf luence on my life.”
“Don’t you miss her?” Wachelle asked? “I really miss her cooking.”
I agreed, remembering my granny’s cooking. Then for the rest of the day, all I could think about was holiday and Sunday dinners at my grandparent’s house.
Truthfully, any Sunday dinner prepared by my father’s mother was the equivalent of a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. She stopped preparing festive dinners when my grandfather died in 1967, but I remember her cooking like it was yesterday.
It was a yesterday time when families ate more meals at home.
The fast food boom was yet to happen, and eating out at a “real” restaurant was a treat for rare occasions. It was also a yesterday when, like for most families then, a meal at our home in Mount Pleasant was on the table precisely coordinated with dad’s arrival from work. Not being at the table at that time was not an op
tion unless you were so badly incapacitated that walking was out of the question.
Also not an option G was deciding whether mom’s menu coincided with your taste buds.
You ate what was on the table without criticism or comment — unless it was a favorable comment about how good it was.
Although it was the age of “eat what your momma put on the table,” there was no way even the pickiest eater was going to leave granny’s table hungry on any day.
The table that occupied my grandmother’s dining room and now resides in mine, was filled to capacity with choices. Common fare was fried chicken or ham, usually both.
Every imaginable vegetable, salad and a casserole was there, along with hot rolls. If that wasn’t enough, the aroma of a fresh baked pie wafted from the kitchen as a reminder to save a little room.
The cooking was a labor of love, and meals were always on the table on time.
That was no small feat for a Sunday dinner considering everyone at the Pittsburg Methodist Church knew my grandmother was really under the weather if she was n
ot in her pew for worship service. That was a feat accomplished only by many hours spent in the kitchen Saturday night and early Sunday morning, something that never dawned on me as a child. I thought the meals were just another form of “grandmother’s magic.”
It was hard to notice behind the scenes work that our parents and grandparents put into family get togethers when, as kids, we were in the yard running through fall leaves and looking for pecans under huge trees that lined my grandfather’s yard.
Smell is purported to be one of the strongest sensory preceptors linked to memory.
I know that it’s true.
A whiff of leaves burning even today reminds me of raking and burning leaves in that same yard more than 60 years ago.
“Don’t you miss her?” Wachelle’s words echoed in my mind last week. I do miss her and I’m thankful for the memories of many Thanksgiving pasts she gave me.
I’m also thankful for the values my grandparents and parents gave me regarding family traditions that have fashioned my Thanksgivings for a lifetime, and every moment of the memories I’m still making.
Happy Thanksgiving and best wishes for all of the memories that go with the season.
