Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving each year makes me even more nostalgic for family memories and tradition than usual. I almost always start my reminiscing with memories of the whole family together at Nanny and Granddaddy's old farmhouse out in the country. It is cold weather in my memory although living in the South it is very possible that it could have been upwards of 75 degrees on Thanksgiving Day (like it is this year!). Anyway, back to the farmhouse... I remember going there every year with my parents and sister and seeing all my mom's side of the family there. Unfortunately, my Dad's parents passed away the summer I was eight years old so most of my holidays were spent with my Mom's family from then on. My aunts and uncle would always love to see us as my sister and I were the only children for a long time. My mom's siblings didn't get married and have children until much later and it was great fun getting all the attention! We would have a huge meal that Nanny cooked all by herself to include at least a 20 pound turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, rice and giblet gravy, biscuits, all sorts of relishes and pickles, pickled peaches (story on that in a bit), celery sticks (to dip into individual crystal salt cellars at each place setting), two kinds of cranberry sauce (with and without berries since Grandaddy liked the one with berries) and so much more I can't remember right now. It was a huge feast and no one left the table unsatisfied. The pickled peaches were a mystery to me. They came in a jar but were always served by my grandmother in a beautiful round crystal pedestal dish with a wide gold band around the rim. I never once tried a pickled peach as a child. It became a joke to see if I would eat one each year but I  held my ground. I guess since it wasn't a staple nutritional food, my mother never invoked the "one bite rule". Thank goodness!

Nanny would always have several choices of cakes, pies and cookies for dessert. The routine would go like this: Nanny would name off everything she had for dessert choices and Grandaddy would say "I'll take some!" Even though he did the same thing every year, we always laughed.

Before dinner, my sister and I would run around the farm playing hide and seek and other games. We loved crawling around underneath the giant magnolia tree in the front yard, wandering under the grapevines and digging in the sand driveway for "doodlebugs". We would find the small circular holes and take a small stick to swirl around in the doodlebug holes (seen below) and call out to the doodlebug to come out. "Doodlebug, doodlebug...come get bread and butter..." My mom and aunts taught us that chant. As you can see by the scale using the pen, the holes were small and on the farm, there were hundreds of them. I don't know what we actually did with the bugs once they crawled out of the holes but we surely had fun aggravating them to come out! Silly, but a vivid memory.

After dinner, the adults would all go out to the front porch where it was cool as night fell. As a child, that was the last place my sister and I wanted to be so we would resume playing inside the house going in closets and dresser drawers fascinated by all the old things from my mom's and aunts' childhood we could find. Old photos, dolls, toys were so much fun to see. My uncle's childhood bedroom was downstairs and the windows looked out onto the front porch so when we were in there we could hear the adults talking. His room was dark and had over sized mahogany furniture in it, including a giant wardrobe that was kind of scary to two little girls. We would only go in that room to hear if the adults were about finished talking and we might be heading back into town for home. Sometimes we would bring our pajamas and we would take turns bathing in the old white claw foot tub. That was a treat!

Before heading out the door I would always ask Nanny for biscuits to take home with me. I wanted one in my hand (to eat now!) and four in a brown paper bag to eat with my family for breakfast the next morning.

Remembering things like this makes me hope that I am helping to build wonderful memories for my boys that someday they will pass along to their children. Maybe the years have brought changes, but the family bond should stay just as strong as it ever has been.