a ghost of thanksgiving past

so...as i plan out my first thanksgiving dinner, i can't help but think backward to thanksgivings past for inspiration.

this kind of thought can take me in a number of ways depending on my mood. it could be nostalgic, culinary, sad, happy, or hilarious.

i am choosing today's ghost to be the nostalgic kind...remembering thanksgiving at my parents home in connecticut as a small child...


i must have been four or five and i can still remember parts of that thanksgiving so clearly. there was a light dusting of snow and my grandparents had traveled north to our home in southbury from danbury to feast with us. i remember walking on our little dead end road with my portuguese grandfather "Dado," holding his hand past the neighbors' yard wondering if my buddy Dave from up the hill would come crashing down it to sled...funny, it was probably my last thanksgiving with Dado, but i can't be sure. the memory has lived quietly for so long i haven't cross-referenced it yet.

our dining room was an often still and dusty, slate floored room that was normally gated at either entrance to keep out our bouncy brittany spaniel, and probably us, the children, as well. it was attached to another room we called the "front room" which was like a parlor...with our nicest furniture and our piano in it. my dollhouse lived in that room, too...and i was allowed to quiety play in it, my little pretend world...a whole other story altogether. i tended to gravitate toward that parlor side of the room which had wood plank flooring, i think. it was warmer, more welcoming on that side. that stone floor was chilly on bare feet...

our long wood dining table would have been set to perfection complete with a table cloth to hide where i had pressed too hard writing my name, permanently tattooing the wood. we would set matching china plates, the good silverware and Mom would whip out decorum to fit the season...the pewter trinkets on the buffet next to the table would have been dusted by one of us children during the day, probably me, in preparation for company. Mom would have stretched up herself to dust the big rustic chandelier over the table.

Mom would have cooked all day...stuffed mushrooms, huge and stuffed full of sausage to start the day's feasting, or so i choose to imagine. the big turkey which she would ask Dad to help her baste. the myriad of side dishs that she would prepare to go with the turkey. two types of stuffing...one with chestnuts, homemade, the other the kind that came from a bag or box. Dad always fought us for the chestnut and we didn't put up much of a fight...back then. there would have been a football game on TV and in the kitchen the stero would be playing Italian Christmas music already...or John Denver.

i think there was probably a big buck hanging out of the tree down near our clubhouse, too...Thanksgiving marked the end of hunting season...and my dad usually was a lucky shot. several years i helped him hang a deer from that tree so the blood would drain, hoisting it with him a rope fixed firmly through the bones of its lifeless ankle. it's that cluster of grisly memories that drove me to be a vegetarian for most of my adolescence. i'm not sure if there was a deer that year though...but to me it seems there should have been, seeing as Dado was a butcher and that this is one of my last memories of him...he died sometime close to this period. of lung cancer, though he didn't even smoke. age 65. and it just seems fitting to have a giant slab of dead meat hanging waiting to be readied to feed out little family for the winter. so i am leaving it in my memory, true or not.

i don't have many memories of him, Dado. but i am thankful for the ones i do have. and i am hoping that my children's grandparents find ways of making lasting memories in the lives of my boys...even if they are mostly due to an early snow...or partially fictionalized due to a melange of childhood memories all wanting to be seen and heard at once. :)