Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is on the horizon… a beautiful holiday that is all-inclusive—not specific to any one religion, any one group of thinkers.

I love holidays. I tend to mark the passage of time by the holidays that pass. Eighteen happy Thanksgivings, and I am leaving childhood and getting ready for adventures apart from family. Six or seven more, and I am dipping my toe into hosting my parents. Dozens more, and I am hoping to create for my own children some holiday experiences that are similar to those created by my parents, aunts, and uncles: flowers on the table, houseplants to decorate rooms where family members digest their meals before the pies are served, and more.

But for me, this Thanksgiving is different.

I love to share thoughts about plants—garden plants and houseplants—and those thoughts are never accompanied by anything sad. Plants and melancholy just don’t go together. But there is melancholy surrounding my Thanksgiving this year. For the first Thanksgiving in my lifetime, I am on this earth without my mother. I have already passed spring and summer holidays since her passing. But Thanksgiving was her favorite. Without her this Thanksgiving, nothing will be the same…. 

But it has to be. To honor her, it has to be.

Thanksgiving for my mum meant pulling out the good stuff: her bright china, her set of silver utensils called Young Love, a name she found amusing when she thought back to the fact she had met my dad in her mid-30s, not exactly a young bird. I remember when a helpful family member, hastily washing dishes after a Thanksgiving meal, accidentally tapped a piece of that cheery china on the kitchen faucet, creating a big chip on a plate. No matter. My mother used all the finery she had, pressing a tablecloth after teaching all day, polishing silver after helping me with homework—working a few days ahead to get everything ready, including cut flowers for the table, new and healthy houseplants for the living room, and a great meal for everyone to enjoy.

My mother would never prepare a holiday table that did not have candles on it, even if the meal to be served was a mid-day one. Nice tapers with a floral arrangement (cut flowers, small houseplants) in the center of the table—those gave the sparkle to the afternoon or evening. (She liked to nestle small houseplants among vases of cut flowers because the houseplants could be enjoyed long after the holiday.) 

There was one year when a fellow teacher was baking decorative bread baskets in the form of small “floral arrangements”. My mum ordered some for the table. But even that year, real greenery and flowers—some in the form of cut seasonal beauties such as tall chrysanthemums, and some in the form of the little potted houseplants—were the decorations that added life to the table that bread baskets, though nice, could not.

Having passed many holidays myself by now—lived a lot of years—I have met some people who spread out their finery to show off, looking down their glasses at others in a superior way. But my mother was as down-to-earth as could be. She had a strong sense of reality, and she was real. 

In teaching packed classrooms of children, she knew that not every student would go home to a peaceful, happy Thanksgiving. So, she’d be sure to read her classes some funny books about Thanksgivings gone awry to balance out the Rockwell-style images and tales of perfection that might be unfamiliar and unattainable. She would even share her own comical tales about burnt pies, the time her lovely sister-in-law arrived in the dining room with a platter of mashed potatoes that slid off the plate en masse and had to be scraped from the floor… you know, the real stuff of living.

This year, I suspect I will think of my mum and dad during all my Thanksgiving prep… those prep days will not be unlike other days. And life will continue to unfold. I will run late in pressing my tablecloth. I will find myself missing a key ingredient for cooking. I will probably mutter to myself as I struggle to cut through a hard-as-rock turnip while preparing the Thanksgiving meal for my own family. But, sure as day, I will get candles on the table, flowers in a vase, and houseplants in all my downstairs rooms. I will do this for my mother, and so that my own sons can feel the presence of my mother by experiencing a Thanksgiving like the ones she prepared.

Life is what you make it; holidays are what you make of them. Get your candles ready, pull out some of your better dishes, order some flowers and houseplants or gather what greenery might remain in the garden. Make things pretty. Celebrate… if not for yourself, then in honor of someone and for someone (or some ones). In doing so, I suspect that you (and I) will feel the warmth of the holiday.