"Will you cook for Thanksgiving?" A fellow teacher makes passing conversation with me.
Hmmm. How do I explain our family's traditional harvest celebration? "We all bring dishes."
She follows up. "Is it at your house?" Maybe that's what she really wanted to know when she asked if I cook.
"We go to Uncle Bill and Aunt Ginger's." I think I'm finished with this causual and common November interchange.
"Do they live far?"
I have to laugh lightly. "It's like the song, 'Over the river and through the woods,' only it's a creek and we drive, not take a horse-drawn sleigh." Almost all of us live within a one-mile radius from the original farmhouse.
Now my discourse partner is showing true curiosity, and not just a casual need for light conversation. "I guess no one celebrates Thanksgiving like a cranberry farm family?"
I look for words to describe what happens once I'm done rushing around these school half days, parent conferences, list making, and ingredient gathering.
First, a trip to the airport to meet my son, Alex's, plane, followed by late-night pie crust creation. (It really is best after resting in the frig.)
The next morning, he and the friend with him from school join a turkey-bowl football game played with many cousins and youth group members at the middle school down the street. Meanwhile, I boil sweet potatoes, chop cranberries, and make a pie filling with Dan and Em (husband and daughter) taking turns as my sous chefs. The Macy's Parade and National Dog Show play in the living room. (I have to take breaks to see the Ocean Spray float, and then the sporting group on the dog show.)
By five we've finished cooking, are cleaned up, and looking presentable. I admire how pretty my daughter is in the deep green top she's wearing as I hand her a dish to take to the car.
It takes all of three minutes to go down our drive to New Road, take the fourth driveway after the creek, and then wind down another long-wooded gravel lane. Once inside, our dishes are placed on the kelly green countertop, and we peruse the hors d'oeuvres for shrimp and a glass of cranberry juice cocktail or sparkling cider.
Little cousins tromp up and down the stairs in games of hide-and-seek. We tease Mark and Judy who come from the shore about whether they chose the correct driveway or misjudged it again. Someone has a football game on in the living room, and I check the score between greeting and hugging Aunt Alice and Uncle Wayne who are visiting from Maine.
After thirty-minutes or so we are all assembled in the living room, and I snap pictures of Dan and Em making big eyes at my demand for documentation of my favorite holiday. Song sheets are passed around and we sing three hymns of Thanksgiving. We sound best on, "Thank you Lord for loving me and thank you Lord for blessing me. . ." when all the kids sing out.
School-aged cousins line up oldest to youngest and each reads an assigned quote, poem, or verse of thanks. Aunt Ginger hollers, "Wilbur, are you finished slicing the bird?" and he comes into the living room to express our gratitude to the Creator for family, a safe harvest, and especially for His Son, our Savior, and His redemptive work on the cross.
We wind our way through the kitchen and heap china plates with turkey, mashed potatoes, (I wonder who will win the mashed potato eating conetest this year. . .) roasted vegetables, Cutts creamed corn, dressing, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, and of course cranberries nestled by a warm yeast roll before finding a seat at the table stretched the full length of the house. I try to count us, but keep losing someone once I get above thirty.
The conversation at the other end of the table is more sedate than my end where my son and his friend from school regale cousins with tales of their daring adventures. Abby and Jordan have been dying for Alex time and poke him and mess with his hair until he turns his undivided attention back their way.
After dinner we enjoy Uncle Bill's favorite loose tea blends with our pie. I snap a picture of the middle school aged cousins with open mouths streaming in fresh whipped cream straight from the can.
More stories, family history, and folklore get batted around until finally, we are so full and so sleepy we roll back into the kitchen to divvy up leftovers into saved recyclables. After that we hug our way to the front door, teasing Mark and Judy about which driveway to pick for Christmas.
I don't suppose a farmhouse Thanksgiving is really much different from how the friend I'm chatting up might celebrate next week so I just say, "It's my favorite holiday. All Dan's family gets together and brings their traditional dishes. I always make my mom's sweet potato casserole."
"Do you have fresh cranberries or canned?"
"Why both, of course. How about you?"
Your turn: I brought my mom's sweet potato casserole to my first New Jersey Thanksgiving, and it's been invited back ever since. Is there a dish you have to make year after year?
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