When November begins, many of us start planning for holiday gatherings with family and friends. During this time of anticipation and preparation, I am thankful for the safety and traditions of our childhood. Like a homing pigeon, my thoughts and memories circle and come to roost, and I recall those times spent with loved ones.
My earliest memories of Thanksgiving include traveling to my maternal grandparents’ home near Rochester. We arrived Wednesday night, and after breakfast Thursday morning, adventures with our cousins who lived around the corner from our grandparents commenced!
Eventually we were called to wash up and find our seats at the “kids’ table” where we enjoyed the usual Thanksgiving fare and returned to our play while the adults lingered over pie and coffee. I wish I could recall what we talked about at that little table. I imagine we planned our next activity? Talked about a game we could play? Maybe shared our Christmas wishes?
By the time I was thirteen, the holiday location changed. My grandfather died, my grandmother moved near our home, and my mother and father began hosting the meal. Our cousins now traveled to our house, and often my parents extended meal invitations to others outside of our family. Our old farm table had many leaves and stretched the length of the room, so we all sat together.
One couple who joined us for several years was Inez and Howard, dear friends of my grandmother.
Howard was a very tall eighty-something, a former farm manager who enjoyed conversation and always marveled at the amazing agricultural machinery available in the 1970s. He had used horses for much of his working life, and he appreciated the modern advancements which made a farmer’s job faster and safer.
“That’s a wonderful, wonderful machine” he said when he put his hand on the combine, parked behind the barns. “That’s a wonderful, wonderful piece of equipment!” he continued after he watched my father use the silo unloader to fill a feed wagon. Like a denim-jacket-wearing Laurence Welk, everything he noticed and liked was “wonderful, wonderful.”
And when asked to give the blessing before our meal, Howard startled my brothers, cousins, and me with this booming, evangelical voice, so different from our subdued Methodism and this mild-mannered guest at the end of our table. We children looked sideways at each other, and the boys began giggling and snorting. Howard was unfazed and continued his full-throated, lengthy prayer, very specific in his gratitude, including the “wonderful, wonderful” equipment.
The next year, Howard and Inez joined us again. We girls remembered and discussed our brothers’ behavior during Howard’s prayer as we got dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner. “Wouldn’t it be terrible if we were the ones who laughed this year?” I said as we headed downstairs to the table. And, as the year before, gentle Howard produced a prayer in the voice of a trumpeting televangelist, and – I’m not proud to admit this – we girls erupted in laughter which continued as we worked and worked to quiet ourselves.
I would like to think he didn’t hear us, but I’m sure he did.
Our extended family no longer meets for holidays at the farmhouse. We each have established traditions with our own children and grandchildren.
But the memories of my childhood holidays are close to my heart, and Howard’s “wonderful, wonderful” remains part of our family’s lexicon. His sincere faith, his overwhelming gratitude, and his prayer, while different from our own, was a lesson in kindness and appreciation.
It’s a Fine Life.
