Holidays

Thanksgiving was always a popular holiday in my childhood home.  My mother spent the day before cooking and baking while we were in school. Then that night she would bake a few more pies and prepare the turkey for the oven. I liked to sit and watch her preparations and learned most of my cooking techniques not from actually cooking myself, but from watching my mother cook. Later, when I was older, I made a few pies, cakes and brownies but no actual meal preparations. It wasn't until I was married that I started cooking for real. Even with that lack of experience I resisted my husband's attempts to turn me into a cook like his mother. She was a good cook but nothing like my own mother. I made do with some of my mother's recipes, a few cookbooks, and most important of all, the original 1940's Betty Crocker Cookbook used by my mother. I loved that cookbook; I still do. It's not in great shape, but I have all the pages complete with my mother's notes. When the publishers came out with a reprint, I bought a copy.

Thanksgiving morning we all were on our best behavior. The delicious smells coming from the kitchen were enough to remind us to help our mother all we could for we wanted nothing to go wrong with that wonderful food. The table in the dining room, which had been transformed from a place to do homework to a beautiful setting for my mother's wedding china and tablecloth, became the favorite room in the house. We constantly checked to make sure everything was as it should be.

When I was young, it was usually just our immediate family with once and awhile a grandparent or two. Later, after my sister went to college, she would bring home boyfriends to share our meal. This made the holiday all the more exciting. The boyfriend of the day was always the one she was going to marry. We always looked forward to her coming home from college to be with us once again.

I tried to carry on the Thanksgiving tradition after I had my own family but it was never the same. I was usually working and only had the holiday itself off, plus I really didn't enjoy cooking, especially large holiday dinners. I felt guilty about this and kept trying to please but after my daughter grew up and left home, I stopped bothering. My husband and I were usually invited to dinner by others and sometimes we went and sometimes we didn't. At other times we went out for dinner with my in-laws to a restaurant but they and my husband would always bemoan the fact that there weren't any leftovers. I finally started hating the holiday because it seemed that everyone around me only cared about the food and forgot about the thanksgiving part. Now I ignore the whole day whenever I can.