A Day Of Thanks

Howdy!

I love Thanksgiving! To me it’s the perfect holiday of absolute fun and chaos all built into one day! You have family members working on the meal itself while the kids watch TV or if it was nice outside, they played out in the yard. If you needed alcohol to get through the day, that was your business and nobody was going to try to talk you out of it because that other person might need a sip later!

My family was quite different, there was always chaos but it was mostly from the fact that it was such a small kitchen and everybody would be crammed in the amount of space left in the room. We would have tons of conversations going at once, sometimes it was just stories in general or people directing what to do next if they were in charge of a dish. Alcohol wasn’t necessarily a big thing in our times together either, which considering by the time food was in the oven, there were already enough headaches going around that I don’t think they wanted to wake up in a hangover that next morning!

This year will be our first major holiday without my papaw.

It’s still fresh in our minds that he’s not here. I am not big at talking about it out loud but while I was very excited to celebrate my birthday at the start of the month I woke up that morning, feeling very emotional because I knew my papaw wasn’t going to be there to help celebrate it. So I understand the feeling of everybody getting together for Thanksgiving and feeling sort of weird and possibly ashamed to have fun without him.

In order to make this post a happy one, I wanted to talk about the good times that we got to have with my papaw during Thanksgiving.

My papaw was very infamous at falling asleep in the middle of anything! A conversation, a game, or just simply having the family all in one room! My sister actually took video one time where she went over the entire room and everybody’s talking or making faces on camera and there’s papaw sitting in the doorway with his eyes shut and head down into his chest. It was so normal that we all thought it was hilarious mixed in with a little cute!

He and my nana were always getting their plates first, he always claimed a leg and would put it on display with a big ole smile on his face! Turkey was the main event and he loved it that my dad, his son-in-law would make for the day.

When it came down to desserts, there were basically only two pies that made their appearance at the table: pumpkin and apple. The only pie that my papaw would eat was the apple but of course a simple dollop of whipped cream wouldn’t suffice, he was very specific that you should only eat apple pie with chocolate ice cream on the side. Apparently, it was a genetic thing on his side of the family but as far as I know nobody else likes it that way! All of the grandkids would have to ask to borrow an ice cream bar because we honestly weren’t into the pies. Of course, later on nana would make a sheet cake for anybody who didn’t want pie and the icing and rest of the whipped cream would be left for the big food fight at the end of the day!

This year, it’s going to be hard to not have our head of the table sitting in silence, enjoying every bite whether it was savory or sweet. It’s going to be difficult to not see him trying to watch something on TV with everybody talking or in some cases yelling back and forth because he’d just turn up the volume. We swear he would do this to piss off nana! By that time, sometimes he’d just give up and go upstairs or go back to bed, which confused us because we were a loud bunch of goofballs when we’re together! No wonder the night of one Thanksgiving, he swore we were making so much noise that the neighbors would call the cops on us!

I don’t know what’s in store for today with my family. I just hope everybody’s positive and thankful that we can remember these memories of spending Thanksgiving as a family and laugh at all of the stupid crap we’ve all done and possibly going to do down the road. I don’t want to ever forget about those times, no matter how old I get, they’ll always live on in my mind.

Hope you are enjoying your day! 🙂

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