I know that I tell the same stories every year about this time but they are my stories and I go with them.
When I was in high school, our speech and debate team would travel over Thanksgiving to Pittsburg, PA to compete in an NFL tournament. No, not football. We were an all-girl school. This was the National Forensics League. Somewhere I have a pin because I was in the NFL. Anyway, we would travel Thanksgiving Day, spend the night in the Ursuline convent (in the parlor and hallway on mattresses we pulled down from the attic) and then compete on Friday and Saturday. We would travel home on Sunday.
I can remember waking up the next morning to find some of my teammates had taken one of the statues off of its pillar and tucked it in next to another of our teammates. We were always reverent, until we weren’t. I was just glad that we didn’t break the statue and that the nuns never found out that we did this. Our coach would have killed us, as would her sister who was in charge of the convent then.
I don’t think we ever did any good at the tournament but I do remember having a lot of fun. It was a long way but we always looked forward to it.
One year, while we were gone, Mom decided to have Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I was glad I was gone because I would have had to do a lot of work. Kim and Grandma did all the cooking. Mom brought the ping pong table up from the basement and seated everyone around it and served the food from the middle of that thing. It was in the living room. That’s Mom for you.
Anyway, Kim made a pecan pie and Daddy said that he was going to have a piece of that pie if it killed him. The next day he was in the hospital. Daddy was diabetic. Yeah, the pean pie was full of sugar.
Through the years we ate Thanksgiving dinner at every aunt and in-laws house. I don’t remember when I made up my mind that I wanted to cook Thanksgiving dinner at my house only because I wanted to have leftovers. So we would have turkey and dressing and a few other things. And pumpkin pie. We always had pumpkin pie. Mainly because I put toffee pieces in my pumpkin pie. So for many years it was just our little family. Then a nephew or two would show up. But about four years ago Katie made up her mind to invite our Mexican workers to Thanksgiving dinner. Jimmy would always cook them a turkey anyway. We just added a few more side dishes and a couple more pies. And the guys seemed to love it. Honestly, I don’t think we could ever un-invite them.
One of the first things we do Thanksgiving Day is go to church. Usually there’s a decent crowd and Lacy always bakes bread for us to share at our Thanksgiving dinners. Well, the word must have gotten out about the bread because church was packed this morning. And all the bread was gone by the time it was all said and done. But Fr. Darrell gave me the line for Thanksgiving which just fit perfectly: “name your blessing”; pretty much tell everyone that they are a blessing to you. So, I will tell you today that you are a blessing to me.
Happy Thanksgiving