Happy Thanksgiving to You

An old post about Thanksgiving. This was from around 2012. 

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I love the way this holiday comes in with pumpkin pie and Pilgrim hats and a day or two off from work.

My husband and I worked this past weekend on our house. We cleaned the regular parts, cleared the rooms where our big kids will stay while they are home. We put up the outside holiday lights, bought a boatload of groceries, cleared some space in the basement where people can work on projects or wrap presents or watch TV while sitting on a lawn chair wrapped in the Mickey Mouse blanket we’ve had since the kids were itty-bitty. 

We made some room in the back part of the basement by recycling the last of the cardboard boxes in which we moved to this house fifteen years ago. (I thought my husband was going to cry. Like many human males, he gets mysteriously attached to the weirdest things…)

There’s this humming sense in the house that Something is Coming. 

Our son will arrive tomorrow evening. Our oldest daughter will take the train Thanksgiving morning. Our young nephews will tumble into our house Thursday afternoon asking for the fire truck and the Hot Wheels garage that they always play with when they are here. Their mother (my husband’s beautiful sister) will have brought too many pies and even more awesome stories from her job at a big city hospital. Her husband might be here though most likely he will still be out in the woods celebrating life by hunting for sweet, brown-eyed deer and then shooting them. 

For a few days there will be lots of comings and goings, a messy kitchen, my husband’s loud laughter making the rest of chuckle and roll our eyes. The dog will be in Paradise with all her kids at home. It will be too busy and nothing will be exactly perfect but it will be Thanksgiving and I guess I am starting now. Giving thanks.

Just tonight a friend forwarded a news item that, wonder of wonder, they found two more of Galileo’s fingers in jars somewhere. 

She sent this tidbit to me because she remembers me talking about the day we saw Galileo’s finger in a jar at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy.  

As soon as I saw the story I flashed back to that incredible day. We’d planned the trip for months; my husband’s fervent wish was to visit exactly this museum. 

That day had been very long already. We’d eaten a breakfast at an outdoor café often featured in Victorian novels then lunch at a different cafe. We’d gone to several museums including the Uffizi, arguably the most important art museum on earth. You can imagine how this thrilled our then 14-year old son (who was in his Wilderness Exploration phase at that point) and our 8-year old daughter in her Hedwig the Owl overalls (Hedwig is Harry Potter’s messenger). 

It was nearly 4PM. My husband really wanted to go through a museum about science?? He did. He’s hardly ever insistent but he was that day. He told the kids they’d like it; they’d see Galileo’s finger in a jar. I swear, that was what he said as a come-on. 

So in we tromped, weary legs, cranky attitudes, and all. 

You might not believe this .. but it wasn’t crowded. We looked at a lot of ancient stuff. We saw surgical tools straight from the Spanish Inquisition. We saw Galileo’s first telescope which truly was awesome. Launched our modern world, it did. We really did see his finger in a jar which was totally nasty. 

What I remember best though were the folding chairs placed next to the wall in many of the rooms. Our 8-year old would clomp from room to room, find the chair, then sit on it and swing her small legs. She was so tired she was past cranky. 

Soon the ordeal was over and we headed back to our hotel. Because Italian hotels rules are horrible (I’m smiling, I loved this) and don’t allow more than four in a room, we had to get to rooms every place we stayed. So the kids went to their room and watched Italian soap operas and sitcoms. It didn’t make any difference that the language was Italian. If one’s parents usually won’t let you watch junk TV but now they will, you go for it.

My husband and I fell asleep.

We woke when the kids pounded at the door. There were ants in their room. It wasn’t too big of an emergency and led to the very fine memory of, “Do you remember the floor ants in Florence?”

By 7:30 we were dining in a small restaurant with checkered tablecloths, candlelight, and music. We ordered lovely food. While we waited for the food to be prepared we told jokes and shared stories of the day. Our youngest drew animals with hats all over her placemat and when the food came, she ate her weight in pasta.

I am sitting here a decades later and I can still taste the artichokes and the Chianti. I can still see the kids’ lively faces and hear the humor and cheerfulness in our voices. 

I don’t know how one truly prepares for anything without remembering what they loved most dearly in the past and then going for that over and over and over again.

I wish you a paradise of affection and candlelight and laughter .. even if your paradise this year will be with those kids all grown up, a new dog, a great book, a funny text from someone who likes you, and a sense of peace within yourself.

Make a memory, not of perfection, but of love and contentment.