After the parade we would go back to my grandmother's, and inevitably her house would smell absolutely wonderful. She would take us back to her weaving room, and show us the latest yarn she was spinning, the natural dyes she was mixing, and what her newest weaving project was. I remember sitting there and carding wool for hours so she could spin me a ball of yarn to take home, smelling the food in the oven until my tummy growled.
My sisters and I would play tag all around the first floor of my grandma's house. It's one of those older homes with the rooms arranged in a circle, so it's possible to start running and end up back where you started.
In this case you would start in the kitchen. My grandma's kitchen is huge. The floor in there is a sort of slate-grey stony color, and the walls are beige. Grandma has copper pots hung here and there, but the major attraction is the breakfast nook, which is where we would all soon be eating. My grandmother loves to set a pretty table. There would be a plain-colored tablecloth, and a colorful runner she had made on the loom just for the occasion. She would also make her own centerpeices. Sometimes they would be dried flowers from the yard, sometimes cornhusk dolls, or homemade candles. There might be gourds, pumpkins, squashes, and who knows what else there.
And of course there was her owl collection. My grandmother has collected owls since I can remember, from all over the world. She has travelled more places than I can remember, and many of the owls still have the scents of the places she bought them. I remember a specific one with the tang of patchouli on it, that came from somewhere in the far east.
The kitchen has large glass picture windows taking up two of the walls, and I could always perch on the breakfast nook bench and watch the birds outside, pecking away at the birdfeeders, and the squirrels trying to foil grandma's latest attempt to frighten them away.
Running out of the kitchen with my sisters behind me, I would end up immediately in the "sitting room". There is a pale green carpet in there, and grandma's blond-colored formal dining area. In the large wall unit/buffet my grandma stores all her photos, and she's always happy to pull out my dad's high school yearbook and show me what a nice young man he was. I almost always barked my shins on the coffee table in the sitting room, until one year Grandma moved it to the attic. At the far end of the sitting room is the big old grandfather clock. Its merciless, low-pitched tick-tock used to keep me awake for nights on end when I slept over, and it would play a beautiful but somewhat eerie "Big Ben" on the hour and half-hour. We tried not to careen into the clock, but it happened on occasion.
Rushing past the clock, we would plow into the front foyer. There are coat closets there, and a big mirror for dressing, but nothing to interest a little kid intent on frolic, so we would plow on, skating into the back hallway. The back hall was grandma's only linoleum, and she always kept it spotlessly clean, so that when we scampered across it in our socks, there was no traction whatsoever. Skidding to the left, you would end up in the den, which is where grandma's TV and big brick fireplace are. There is almost always a cheery fire crackling in there, but the big windows on the entire back wall would chill us, so we would frequently warm ourselves on the slate apron before skittering off to the next diversion. The loom area was off-limits, so we would take the outside edge of the room past the old kerosene furnace, and end up in the utility room. This is where grandma's laundry is, and where she stores practically everything on a bewildering assortment of wooden shelves. This room always had a rich, earthy aroma, because grandma would set seeds to sprout there on the window ledge in pots, so she would be ready to plant them in the spring.
From there, it's a leap up the steps, and one is back in the kitchen.
Dinner at grandma's was always a tasty occasion. My grandmother loves to cook, and has been known to marinate something for 18 hours prior to cooking, and crazy things like that. Everything was always homebaked and home-made, right down to the jams, jellies, and apple butter. She makes the tastiest turkey I can remember having, and she still won't tell anyone what she uses in the marinade.
There is an old family recipe for a raspberry-cranberry sorbet that goes along with our turkey. It's quite an acquired taste, and as a kid I didn't appreciate it much. As an adult, however, I miss it whenever I get turkey without it. It's served in a scoop right next to the steamy-hot turkey, but nowadays I will eat it straight up with a spoon, too, because it's so good.
Grandma also has a slightly spicy way of making long grain wild rice, and her home-baked bread is a fluffy, steamy wonder to taste. There would always be far more food than we could eat, because Thanksgiving would be grandma's big chance to serve up the harvests from her gardens for the year. We would eat several different kinds of squash, sweet corn, salad, potatoes, onions, carrots, snow peas, peas, beans, asparagus, zucchini, apples and crabapples, all from her garden, depending on how well the season had gone.
After all of that, the adults would sit around the table, chatting lazily, their stomachs full of tryptophan and delay dessert as long as possible while we kids ran off to play with grandma's puppets. She had a grand collection of them, and we were forever staging the our own little Hamlets and Romeo & Juliets with mice, owls, monkeys, and bears. If we were noisy we'd be sent to play in the yard, which is well over 2 acres, and has lots of great trees to climb on.
Dessert would always include grandma's "punkin" pie. (My grandmother never pronounces that word any other way.) We would also always have homemade ice cream, and pies with whatever berried grandma had grown that year. There were usually raspberries, strawberries, apples, and blackberries. Grandma also grew grapes, but we usually didn't like them, because they were too sour to munch the way we were used to. Later I found out that those are wine-grapes that grandma brought back from southern France in the 50's, and has been tending ever since.
Sometimes my dad and his friends would retire to the den to watch the football game, leaving my grandma and mom with the kids to entertain. My grandmother has been a schoolteacher since 1948, and still is, so of course she always had projects for us to work on. We wrote books, illustrated them, and bound them, made dioramas and mobiles. I remember one year making pots out of clay and baking them in the oven.
When it was all over, we were asleep before the car got to the end of the driveway.
This year I'm very thankful to be spending Thanksgiving a different way. My grandmother is on safari again, so we won't be having the traditional feast. Forest, Kirstin and I will be going to my mother's house early in the day, to see Karen, Jim, Laura, Mark, grandma Ruth, mom and Sam. We'll play the piano together, sing a lot, and quite possibly have a bonfire if it's nice outside. Of course my mother will have turkey, and we'll bring rolls, and generally have a relaxing meal as grown-up families do.
Then we will head over to Forest's grandmother's house. She will be having the more rowdy get-together, Forest's dad, uncle, and aunt, and all their spouses and kids. Most of Forest's cousins are our age, but I guess there are a few younger ones in the bunch still in high school, and some of his cousins have children themselves. Kirstin should have someone to play with. We will be eating yet another big dinner, and when we are about ready to burst at the seams we will all tromp outside to play football. I'm lead to believe this is full-contact tackle football, and that Forest's grandma is the meanest player on the field. I'm actually looking forward to it very much. It will be nice not to have a completely sedentary day. We're planning to have a quiet evening at home to recover from it all, though, just in case.
Some of the things I for which I am thankful this year:
I have a great job.
I've got enough money to live on and enough food to eat.
My family is hale and healthy and seems to be getting along well.
My munchkin and her talents
My Forest and his talents (hee hee)
A nice place to live
A reliable car
Old friends and new ones
Being physically fit and healthy
Having grown so much
The beautiful weather we have had this year
Our psychotic kitten
The bountiful opportunities I have had in the last year to be creative and act
Health insurance
Forgiveness and tolerance
Singing & making music
