Thanksgiving Dinner

It's a rainy, grey morning here. I stuffed India into a warm sweater, raincoat and her bright red rubber boots, and sent her outside to dig and wash potatoes (with help) for Thanksgiving supper this weekend. It's a perfect morning, with the CBC quietly buzzing, my coffee mug steaming and the coo coo clock ticking goodness all around me.

Thanksgiving has been, for years, my favourite holiday. Growing up in the country, I used to rummage through the trees for berries and leaves and the last of the summer flowers to decorate our table. All the girls and Grandmas and aunts, bumped hips and elbows, drank wine, peeled potatoes, folded back tinfoil and tea towels on steaming casserole dishes, polished silver, set tables, "supper's ready." I always thought it was a good time of the year to be a girl. I did not know, and still do not, what the boys filled in their time with. Poor boys.

Sometimes, I am amazed at the wisdom we have displayed in setting aside a day to say, "This here, this shining, beautiful thing, is what I am thankful for." I live in such abundance, and a weekend to revel in that abundance with family, feels so close to heaven for me, that I can't stop grinning from all that goodness that keeps showing up in orange vegetables, red wine, warm candle light, mashed potatoes and china, loud kids, stacks of dishes, wise-cracking brothers, giggling sisters.

I love that we love each other in these tangible ways of, "I'll bring the vegetables. You bring the dessert?" I love watching the ways in which we are evolving - boys helping with the clean up, an extra table for the kids, cigars after dinner - girls included. There are, of course, the missing chairs that used to be filled with loved hearts that also cracked jokes and filled in empty spaces. The thankfulness in these lonelinesses, sometimes only being that one is alive to sit at another dinner, another year, until a kinder thankfulness returns. And, until then, we carry each other through. And we do, and we do, and we do.

One of my "some day" dreams, is that I will live in a large enough house to host a Thanksgiving dinner. I'll use my best china (no paper plates for me!), arrange flowers, pull wine corks, refill glasses and plates, and always, be that annoying aunt that makes everyone go around the table and say what they are thankful for. We will pop out blessings on each other like a Jack-in-the-Box, saying, "Did you know? See here. I love you. God is so good."