“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
For years and years, Thanksgiving Day meant gathering with extended family often twice in that one day, for a huge traditional formal meal with my extended family and then my husband’s extended family.
We managed.
Each family needed to have everyone present, especially when there were grandchildren added to the joy.
We were and are so very thankful for these dear family members and for our mothers who, having their own teaching positions, managed the whole meals.
When the next generation took over the preparations, the expanding extended families still gathered.
I took over the hosting for my mother; my sister-in-law took over for her mother.
This getting together was beyond tradition and had become essential for everyone, as though missing the Thanksgiving Day meal would put an uncomfortable snag in moving ahead with life.
I enjoyed everything about preparing for the full formal, sit-down dinner: the table linens, fine China, crystal, silverware, serving pieces from former generations, all the food preparation.
Enjoyed everything until one Thanksgiving.
I had set an early alarm to get the twenty-five-pound turkey into the oven for our afternoon dinner.
Around 10 a.m., my husband wondered why the wonderful smells of roasting turkey were missing.
We opened the oven door. No blast of hot air hit us. The oven was barely warm to the touch. The bird was a clammy warm, sickly grey. The oven had died.
While my husband put the bird into double trash bags, I phoned Kroger’s.
Kroger had recently started offering fully-cooked turkey dinners. Might they still have a roast turkey in this late morning? Yes, they had several small roasted turkeys.
Whew!
Kroger saved Thanksgiving Day for us!
It was a very new additional kind of thankfulness that year.
In recent years, we’ve been glad for catered meals that ease the preparations.
And your memories of Thanksgiving Day and its people?
Precious, of course.