Thanksgiving Memories

Hope and John's Farm 2009

My mother was waxing melancholy on the phone tonight.  Her company went home.  Empty house.  She reminded me of the Thanksgivings when we were growing up.  Oh, the traditions we had.

Each year we spent Thanksgiving Day with the Stephens clan--at Grandpa Gene and Grandma Ethel's or Dale and Maureen's or Jim and Peg's.  They all lived within miles of one another--close to Washington, Iowa.  Sometimes, but not always Aunt Kathy, Stacey and Scott would drive over from Omaha.  It was always cold.  Sometimes bitter cold--I remember once my Dad blow-drying the car's engine block when we went to leave.  The ten cousins played.  Once an inner-tube was hooked up behind a tractor in the snow.  That was an uncle.  My dad never would have done that.  (Daddy would haul us over hill and dale behind two huge Percheron horses in a rickety wagon--but the tractor just wasn't safe.)  One year there was quite the scandal when Aunt Peggy already had her Christmas tree up.  Oyster stuffing.  Yuck.  Dale and Maureen had a wooden toy barn with animals in the basement.  How I loved that toy.  For years my mom planned some elaborate craft for after dinner.  Eventually we switched to wine.  How many little felt ornaments and quilted hoop things can you make?  Aunt Maureen would eventually pull out the hymnal and some sheet music and four part harmony singing would ensue.  As Alison Kraus sings--oh how I long to hear that harmony. . .

The drive home across the Iowa back roads was the all-clear to start Christmas.  Susan and I would sing and sing and sing all the way home.  Hark how the bells. . . . The year of the engine block heater my feet never got warm the whole drive home.

At home, Mama and Grandpa would be waiting--having driven in the daylight from Lime Springs, four hours north.  We would all eat leftovers.

Early Friday (not "Black Friday" not 3:00 a.m. and not midnight) the girls went Christmas shopping.  My mom gave me $20, and maybe I had saved a little money, to get everyone a present.  We went to the downtown Davenport Peterson-Honored-Von Maurs departments store.  I'm not spelling it right--but it doesn't exist anymore to look it up.  Now it is just Von Maurs.  There was no gift that couldn't be bought there.  And all for $20.  We dressed up.  Lunch at Bishops.  A slice of ham, french fries and french silk pie.  Three generations.  Then Susan would take something to the car and lose the car keys.  They would turn up in a dressing room of the teen section of Von Maurs--called "The Loft."  Sorry Susan--but it's part of the story. . .

At 6:00 p.m. I would start to cry as it became painfully obvious to me that we weren't going to make it home in time to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on CBS at 7:00 p.m.  If I was lucky, we made it home by Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  Otherwise, you had to wait a whole year to see it again.

We hurried to hide all our gifts in our closets. Grandpa would have the woodbox filled and the floor vacuumed and the table set.  Who knows what else he did all day?

It is no wonder my mother is melancholy, there are so many happy times to reflect on.  This is her first Thanksgiving without her mother.

We were blessed to have all those times together.
Now we turn around and make new memories for our kids to write about.  They won't be the same, but they will be just as precious.