November 26, 2021
Thanksgiving 2021 is behind us now, just another memory like
so many other Thanksgivings.
I don’t mix my
holidays. I hang onto fall as long as possible. It’s painful for me to transition from fall
to winter and from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
I guess that’s why I always delay the Christmas decorations and
Christmas music . Maybe I hang onto
Thanksgiving the way I hang on to my memories of Josh. Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday. He loved the family gathered and he loved his
pumpkin pie.
I have autumn
wreaths, paper mache’ pumpkins, seasonal wooden signs, and a whole collection
of decorative turkeys. A quilt made by my
mother with appliqued autumn leaves, I drape across the chair. Though politically incorrect, I display my pilgrim
figures. They remind me of a different
era, the innocence of childhood, and being too young to know how ugly people
can be to one another. I’m always sad when it’s time to put these fall
decorations back into the drawer for another year.
Although the holidays are easier now than when Josh first
left us, there’s always a longing, a loss, a sense of regret and the sadness of
a mother who has outlived her child.
Today as I cleaned
house, it made sense to just gather the autumn décor rather than move it to dust
and put it back again, only to have to put it away in a few days. But instead of carefully wrapping it and putting
it inside the deep, drawer of the antique china hutch where it resides for 11
months out of the year, I gathered and left it in a heap on the dining room table
for a few more days. In this manner, I
can cling to autumn for a while longer.
Staring at the mix of autumn décor on my dining room table, I
tried to sort out my earliest Thanksgiving memory from all the memories stored
inside my head. I was young and that
period of time is hazy, but I catch a glimpse in my mind’s eye of my maternal
grandfather’s extended family gathered at the home of my great grandparents who
lived in the Missouri Ozarks: Great Grandma Starnes with her old-fashioned
apron over a simple dress, children under foot, a large family crowded around a
small table loaded with delicious, country food. While the details might be vague, the comfort
of being surrounded by family who loved me is still very clear.
Later Thanksgivings I recall were spent with my paternal
Grandmother. While my mom was an only
child, my dad was one of six living siblings (and two more who were deceased). So, those holidays at Granny’s meant a whole
bunch of aunts, uncles and cousins packed into the small space of her tiny
house trailer, spilling out into the yard and even the woods of that North
Georgia Mountain home. Those holidays
with my dad’s family connected me to my Appalachian roots and cemented the bond
of cousins who had inherited a tiny bit of our ancestor’s Scott’s -Irish blood.
Differences of opinion arose, and arguments sometimes ensued as we played together
on that mountain soil, but the blood that once cemented the great Scottish
clansmen was still strong enough to make us believe that together we were
invincible.
There were many Thanksgivings (and other holidays) we spent
at home with just my siblings. We always
had a good meal, but my parents didn’t make a production out of any of the holidays.
By this time, my mother had passed away, my dad remarried, and he had lost the
spark he had as a younger man before my mom’s death. Those were quiet days. My dad
and brothers might go out hunting, or we might spend the afternoon with dad
cutting firewood. There was no such
thing as a wasted day even if it were a holiday.
When I reached adulthood, Thanksgivings were spent, for the
greater part of 13 years, in Alaska with my maternal grandparents. Their home always provided my children and I a
place of peace and refuge. The memories
we made with them are ones I will always treasure. Their love sustains and the lessons they
taught me by their consistent example continues to influence my life even after
their passing.
My list of
Thanksgiving memories would not be complete without including the ones we spent
with my children’s paternal grandparents. I have genuine affection for this family, and they
remain close to my heart and my life even though my marriage to their son ended
many years ago.
Since I have been married to Mike, we have spent every Thanksgiving
Day with his family at the farm in Verona, Virginia. The exception was last
year with Covid and one year I missed when I wasn’t feeling well. Thanksgiving
on the farm is always a big affair with the large, extended family attending
and bringing delicious side dishes to compliment the ham and turkey provided
and cooked by Mike’s mom. Inevitably
because there are multiple farmers represented in the family, there will be
some sort of farm related venture to keep us from being early. All the farmers will straggle in or leave early,
squeezing family time and the meal into an otherwise already busy day. This year, Mike and I delivered a thousand
pounds of beef and pork to customers in Augusta County and returned home the
same day with a load of hay for my cattle.
Of course, when we arrived home after being gone for 16 hours with over
five hours of that being travel time, there were cows to milk and animals to
tend.
A few Thanksgiving weekends, when possible to find someone
to step in and take care of the animals, Mike and I have left after the meal
with his family and made the trip to Georgia to have a short Thanksgiving
get-together with as much of my family as can make the trek back to Lookout
Mountain.
Mostly, over the years, I have good memories of Thanksgiving
Weekend but there was one holiday season when the nightmare in which I found myself,
could no longer be ignored. That holiday
season in 2000 was the end and the beginning all wrapped together and just
waiting to be sorted. Suffice to say
that a host of bad decisions can’t be reconciled no matter how hard someone
prays for miracles. That Thanksgiving there was no turkey or large meal of any
kind to share with family. The four of
us were living in a rented house which we could no longer afford to rent. The only food left to us consisted of leftovers
from the great food storage of 1999 in anticipation of the apocalypse of Y2K: beans and rice vacuum sealed in mylar bags. The world in a larger sense didn’t fall apart
in 2000, but my own individual life finally crumbled. Those bags of stored
dried goods that were supplemented with a few cheap groceries kept us fed. The kids qualified for breakfast and lunch for
free at the public school. I ate sparingly
of one small meal a day and spent my time walking. Alone on the trails in the Colorado mountains I
was aware that it was pointless for me to start yet another job that I would
only soon have to abandon. I was unable to
keep a job and live in the domestic situation in which I had found myself where
my partner moved the family every six months or less. Looking back, I can judge
myself harshly for the choices I made. At the time, I was beaten down and unclear on
how to break the cycles that enslaved me and subsequently my children. It was a bleak Thanksgiving and the weeks
from that Thanksgiving until Christmas only brought darker days. With no money left
to pay another month’s rent, we gave up our well-maintained town house but not
before the tow trucks were sent to repossess our only remaining vehicle. I hid in shame as the big Dodge truck was
piggy backed out of the parking lot and I became further entrapped in this life
over which I seemingly had no control. Borrowed
money got us a U-Haul and gas for the 1700-mile trip from Colorado to Virginia
where my in-laws took us in and kept us from being homeless. I would eventually reach rock bottom before
making the choice to claw my way out of the abyss.
That horrible year in which I found myself ashamed, judged,
alone, fearful, useless, abused, manipulated, tormented and unable to care for
myself or my children, I learned not to judge people by how their life appears
to others. When I recall this memory of
this very hard Thanksgiving and the Christmas season that followed, my takeaway
is that things are not always as they seem.
To others, it looked as if my family had everything we needed when we
were in fact desperate. Yes, the
circumstance were the consequences of our own actions, but thank God for those
family members who offered grace and a way of escape so that I had the
opportunity to redeem myself and make better choices. I had to let go of unfulfilled dreams, walk
away from the religious instructions that had been engrained into my being that
one does not end marriage no matter how abusive it may become, face the fear of
retaliation, and fall on my face over and over during the process before
finally being able to stand strong. Hopefully, who I am today is at least in part,
much more empathetic and loving than the person I would have been if I had not experienced
such loss. I hope it has taught me that
when in doubt about the circumstances of others, to err on the side of love
rather than to stand in judgement.
November 28, 2021
I pulled the long, heavy curtain back from the bedroom
window and laid it over the decorative hook.
Underneath, the layered lace allowed the bright sunshine to shine through.
The views are blurry, however, until I pull the lace temporarily to the side
and gaze out across the meadow. While I
can see much better than before, still I can only see as far to the right or to
the left as the window frame allows. No
matter how hard I might try to see what is beyond my limited vision, the whole
picture remains a mystery.
Staring hard at the new day just outside my window with
memories of past Thanksgivings running through my mind, I think about how we
view others through the small frames of our own, individual perspectives. It’s easy to misinterpret, become annoyed,
judge, get the wrong impression, or even to give someone more credit than they
deserve because we can only see a small portion of their life. Social media especially magnifies the limited
understanding we have of reality. There
seems to be no time greater to practice empathy than the present, pushing aside
the negative feelings that keep us from seeing the whole picture, just as I
must push aside the curtains to let the sunlight illuminate my room. When we tap into our own adversities and
realize that all of humanity shares a common bond, we realize that we are no
better and no worse than any of our human brothers and sisters. Realizing our own vulnerability allows us to
offer grace to others who are struggling as well. We are all a work in progress and Lord knows,
I’ve got a long way to go.
"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have
known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their
way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and
an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a
deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." Elisabeth Kübler-Ross