November 22 2023
Thanksgiving tomorrow!
Dear Friends,
We’ve made it to another Thanksgiving Day. We’ve all experienced lots of them, but even so, each one still feels special. And different from many in the past. Having passed the 3/4 of a century marked, it’s easy to review in my brain the generalities of many Thanksgivings past and the friends or relatives involved.
As a little lad, we nearly always had T-Day at Aunt Leila and Uncle Pete’s house. Leila was my maternal grandpa’s sister. Or sometimes we would all gather and Grandpa and Grandma’s house with the same people. These were in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as was our house. The meal focus throughout my life has always been turkey, never ham.
On one occasion, Grandma attempted to make one of the pies for our desert. The challenge in those days was to make a properly flaky crust, done by the proportion of shortening you added. She rolled the dough out and shaped it just right, but it kept splitting. Or it wouldn’t shape right into its flat circle. Or it would fall apart while being transferred into its pie pan. After each failed attempt, the dough got reformed into a ball to make another try at it. Finally, after several tries with no success and lots of start-overs, Granny got really disgusted with the thing. She picked up the dough ball, threw it violently to the floor, opened the back door and literally kicked the dough out with her foot, accompanied with a few choice vocabulary words.
When we moved to Alaska, staying four years, the celebration was always just our immediate family . . . . Mother, Dad, Lynda, me. The meals were always the same . . .Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, whole cranberry sauce, maybe a couple other items. Always pumpkin pie, and sometimes mincemeat pie. The whole thing always good except for the mincemeat pie.
Moved to Pueblo, Colorado and now I was high school age, and sometimes my grandparents would drive there from grand rapids, and I think my dad’s mother visited us one year all for T-Day. Next move four years later, was to Cairo, Illinois at the southern tip of Illinois. From there, I left home to go to college in Big Sandy, Texas. I went back home some years, and some years not. So that’s when Thanksgiving days changed.
Who was involved with subsequent T-Days, there is lots I don’t remember, but many were with my sister Lynda, and her husband Ernie, and for 30 years with my late wife Jane. Now, all my time and all T-Days are with Donna. I’m very much thankful for all that I have had.
If asked what am I thankful for, number one on the list, without question, is Donna. I’m thankful that we have been able to open our quilt shop and provide a great experience for so many people. Unlike the saying, life is definitely not too short for things. I’ve had a long and mostly happy life, long because I was able to experience so much variety in it. Not everyone I’ve known is still around of course, but they were there, and that’s a tremendous thing to be thankful for. If I may, I’m also very close, and have always been very close, to God and Christ, and you can’t get any better blessings than that.
If you would . . . . here’s your call to action for this time . . . . please respond to this e-mail and list a few things you are thankful for. We would really love to hear from you on this and eagerly await knowing your feelings and blessings.
Chip
