Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Holiday Spirit


Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I wish everyone a day of happiness with family and friends and all things warm and comforting. That's what it is all about right? Being with people you love. The people who know and love you best and that you can totally relax and be yourself with. I wish that for you and I wish I had that for me this year.

Don't get me wrong- I am very excited to be spending my first major Holiday with my new family. I have the wine and I am looking forward to spending time with Chris and getting to spend some more time getting to know his mother. Nervous? Sure but it will be great and I am excited about it.

It's just not -my- family and as great as it will be it won't be the same Holiday I grew up with and the truth is that kind of Holiday will never happen again now that we have lost my Grandma.

In my family my Grandma was truly the heart of the family. The one and only thing she ever really wanted was to have her whole family together for the Holidays. She would cook for days and days. That weird green bean casserole. The pink fluff gunk with odd bits of chewy things that no one ever quite identified. There was always the one dish that didn't exactly come together as planned.

There was always a race for the star dishes....turkey and ham. Sitting down next to the butter if you wanted a hope of ever getting your buns buttered. And the holy grail- the mashed potatoes. This was the most heavily mocked side for who had the biggest mound and yet I think it was out of jealousy for not getting there first. We would eat early- about 1pm which was great cuz it left the whole day open for eating, grazing the leftovers after dinner and then a good amount of time before the pies got broke out. Now Grandma loved her pie and we would have: pumpkin, apple, cherry, lemonade (special request for Toni and Debbie), and mincemeat. To this day I hope I never ever learn what a mince is and why we want its meat in a pie.

The best part of the day was never the food though (sorry Grandma) it was a chance to flop down in a dog pile of family and in a food coma just chat and laugh and tease with my family. Now more often than not I was the butt of this teasing but yes, I can even now look back on that with some nostalgia. What I wouldn't give to hear Troy teasing me for some random thing. What I wouldn't give to feel my Grandma patting my thigh as she told me to be a good girl (this isn't a little girl memory btw- if I saw her right this second she would say the same thing.)

Just sitting here now I can see my mother's house and smell all the Thanksgiving smells. The oven cranking meant it was the one time of the day that the house was even close to warm. Mom was famous for keeping her house and temperature "ice box". I miss it and I miss being home.

But as I said.....it's not gonna happen anymore. My mom was never a fan of being the hostess so she is happy to give up that task and the family is drifting apart. The kids are growing up and have other places to be and of course I am out of state.

Soooooo I will have an enjoy my Holiday and start some new traditions with the newest members of my family and it will be imperfectly perfect and we will start our own new traditions. And in my head I will hit the replay button and bring some of the spirit of those past days into my heart and that will be enough.

I love and miss you Troy and Grandma, you will always be here in my heart.

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