“It’s happy Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving today!
We’re going to have dinner at Aunt Kim’s today!
We love it at Aunt Kim’s, it’s cozy and snug!
We love giving Aunt Kim our Thanksgiving hug!”
–It’s Thanksgiving
It happened the same way every year. We would all gather at Aunt Kim’s house up on the hill and sit down as one big family for Thanksgiving dinner. Aunt Kim and Uncle Lyle sat at the head of the table, Gramma and Grampa on the side by the windows, Uncle Bobby and Aunt Colleen next to them, my Mom and Dad across from them, and then the children and great grandchildren to follow. From the elders on down. Hierarchy of the generations played out before our eyes.
It started with my sister Celia sleeping over at Aunt Kim’s house on the night before Thanksgiving, to get up early and help Aunt Kim with the dinner preparations. Setting the table, peeling the potatoes, filling the milk and water red glass pitchers, setting out the butter and gravy dishes, toasting the dinner rolls. It was no easy process and definitely not a job for one or two persons alone. After Celia retired the role, the job moved on to me. It was more fun and exciting, something I looked forward to every year, than a laborious task. It was the one night I got to sleep over at Aunt Kim’s house and wake up to the sounds of the Macey’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Tiffany, my cousin, and I were always giddy with holiday spirit, and would stay up late watching Christmas movies the night before and then sleep in until we awoke to Aunt Kim’s voice announcing the “Parade is on!” She never let us miss when the Rockette’s would perform their newest routine or when Santa would wave by in the end. The older I got; the more sentimental the parade felt to me. Always representing those early Thanksgiving mornings at Aunt Kim’s house and the start of our holiday season.
Looking back, I’m not sure if putting Tiffany and I together in charge of helping Aunt Kim with dinner, was the best idea. I remember laughing until my belly ached listening to Tiffany bicker away with Aunt Kim about how to set the table or where each person should sit. I remember Uncle Lyle chiming in with his additional commentary, “Tiff, would you just listen to your mother.” I remember Tiffany being sent off to vacuum the floors, as a way to hush her up and simply keep her out of the kitchen. Being no green thumb in the kitchen myself, I tried my best in helping out, as there was always so much to do. I would help peel the potatoes, but one year I remember washing my hands over the pot of snowy white mashed potatoes that sat in the kitchen sink. Tiffany must have been making me laugh or I was busy trying to think of what I needed to do next, and all of a sudden, I see a layer of bubbles forming on top of the potatoes. I’ll never forget the way Aunt Kim looked at me when she found out. Not my finest moment in the kitchen, and that was probably the year I stopped helping with the mashed potatoes. Holidays are never perfect, and maybe that’s what makes them so memorable.
With Thanksgiving always falling around the start of hunting season, I’ll always associate the sound of a gunshot with Thanksgiving morning. I remember one year, Tiffany and I waking up and being rushed outside to see Chad’s freshly shot buck. The hunters all gathered around his prize, Aunt Kim running in to grab her camera, telling the men to gather up for a picture, one that could potentially make our family calendar next year. Misty running around the yard. The smell of wood smoke spilling out of the shop. A numbing frost lingering in the air. Fog rising up from the Valley. The faint smell of a turkey roasting in the oven. This is one image I will always have of Thanksgiving. This one moment right here. How it’s taken me years to realize that this is some very special moment in my life. That not everyone in the world gets to remember Thanksgiving the way I do. We do. That being born and raised in the Valley, I was able to experience and hold on to moments just like this.
As I aged, the way Thanksgiving looked changed. One year, we were blessed with a thick layer of snow, and I remember Tiffany and I rummaging through the shop for our old sleds. We hiked up to the top of the sledding hill and for hours we were the children we used to be. Racing down the slope, to simply get to the bottom and hike up and do it again. Laughing and forgetting our adult duties, grateful that Aunt Kim even let us go out to play. Some years it would be warm. Throughout my college years, I remember waking up early with Bethany and we would join the hunters on their Thanksgiving morning hunt. Dressing in cameo, with hints of orange and flannel poking through, we would quietly follow the pack of men through the woods. Like a maze we covered the floor of the valley, searching for that perfect buck. How I am grateful now to have seen how it was done. Watching firsthand, my grandfather do what he so loved to do, along with my uncles and cousin. Observing the men of my family in their glory.
While the day of Thanksgiving may have changed and come to look different with time, the dinner part never did. We all sat in somewhat of the same place. We ate at right around the same time. We started with the same prayer that Gramma used to say, and then we would go around the table and say our “thankfuls.” What we were grateful for that year or in that moment. Not one person failed to mention their family. Our family. After we made our way around the table, we all joined hands and began to sing the Johnny Appleseed song that my father had taught us when we were young and later came to be our “prayer” before all meals. Everybody knew it and with time we even added in a “yee haw, let’s eat!” at the end, that would make everyone giggle and laugh. This was our tradition, our Thanksgiving dinner every year, that until I moved away and wasn’t always home for, did I come to understand how beautiful of a tradition we had and still have today.
After dinner, we would clear the table. Uncle Lyle would load the dishwasher, Aunt Kim would wrap up the leftovers and get the desserts ready. Games would be played from pitch to spoons to charades. There was always a football game on TV, or that silly national dog show. We would lounge and catch up. Drink the little chocolate liquor bottle candies Aunt Kim would get from BJ’s. Stephanie and I would sneak off to the back bedroom and fill each other in on our latest life gossip. Pictures would be taken, and the great grandbabies would be played with. Uncle Bobby’s birthday would always be celebrated. The house would always get too hot, and we would open the side doors to let the wintery air in and cool things down, always joking that it felt like Gramma’s house on Christmas morning with her wood stove constantly running. And then slowly, one by one, we would all make our way out. Bundling up, taking our leftovers, giving the last of our hugs and farewells and thanks. We would step out into the frigid air, where we could all breathe again and feel how full we really were, and stop for a moment and just take it all in. Looking up at the bright stars and thanking God for another Thanksgiving at Aunt Kim’s house. Of being all together once again and realizing that this didn’t happen much anymore. How after decades of this one tradition, we can all still be grateful for our Thanksgivings spent at the top of the Valley.