I’m 59, so I don’t really think of myself as old, but my sons are 28 and 29 and have given me three grandkids so they don’t see themselves as the kids generation, either. So my favorite part of yesterday’s Thanksgiving, but also the most difficult was learning to step back, sit down and be ok with things being done differently than how I was comfortable. I finally learned a Turkey Day routine that flowed easily for me. But I wasn’t the only one doing the routine anymore. I was surrounded by people I love and my house was warm and getting trashed as always. It was fun. So what if the side dishes were potato salad instead of cranberry and the plates were plastic And being loaded and delivered to friends of my son. Life gives us very little time to really keep the same Traditions before they morph into something else in the next generations hands.
Thinking of the holidays over my lifetime, there was often invited friends and family, or travel on our part to the home of another family member. Sometimes Turkey, ham or beef, and always massive amounts of side dishes and desserts. Sharing food, playing card games or board games while sitting around chatting. Heaps of dirty dishes and a scramble to find enough chairs around the table. Folding card tables for the kids table when I was a child with my cousins. Food at my childhood usually included five cup salad, with marshmallows and mandarin oranges and coconut and I haven’t had that in ages. Summer holidays had cold Baked chicken and macaroni salad and watermelon. The foods included seemed mandated but have slowly changed. The people included was flexible but always full of love and laughter. I was so blessed to always be part of a loving, extended family. We spent years in either Cody, Powell or Meeteetse. And then after I met Greg and my cousins were moving into homes of their own, holidays were split between Cody and Newcastle and started to include longer drives over the Big Horn Mountains in snowy conditions. Not that Driving to Powell or Meeteetse didn’t include some scary winter driving. Celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year in Wyoming just did mean snow and often sledding. I remember once, mom driving on the way home from Meeteetse with snow shooting in at the windshield in long glowing needles like the stars in Star Trek during warp speed. Her Dad was in the car, her mom, my dad and Brother Brett. I can’t remember if Lance had been born yet. But we knew basically where we were. There is a long gradual curve left around a big hill, and on the right shoulder of the road, a steep drop away. It felt like we were hurtling forward and my Dad, Grandpa and I were all screaming, “stop!” But mom said, “I’ve been stopped for minutes.”
later after Greg and I moved, First to Ashland and then to Crescent City, we didn’t get as much snow at home, but holiday trips had become long, 3,000 mile drives guaranteed to include lots of winter weather and the stuff of stories.
I wish just once I could drop my family from today, back in time and introduce them to a holiday from my childhood, blending my Grandparents with my Grandkids. But they only meet in me.
