Ghost of Thanksgiving past

- I don't have many photos of Thanksgiving when we were little but here's a later one of my cousin Jill (L) talking to my sister (R). You can kind of see my grandmother between/behind them, and you can see the back of my head ;) at the far right

I haven't experienced a "traditional" Thanksgiving since my grandparents died - they were the glue that kept out family together. And as an adult, I never participated in that rite of passage: the preparing/cooking of the turkey .... I've been a vegetarian since college and during the short time I was married we had T day with the Japanese in-laws. Tomorrow I'm going over to my sister's for Thanksgiving veggie pizza :)



But I thought I'd time-travel back in thought to what Thanksgivings were like for me when I was small ....

The dinner was held at my grandparents' home. My grandmother would spend the day preparing all the usual stuff - turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad, pumpkin and mincemeat pies - and my aunt, uncle and cousins would bring green bean casserole and sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows. My grandmother's sister, Aunt Alberta, would always bringing along a bunch of Medjool dates.

The adults who weren't helping with cooking would play Pinochle and we kids would watch tv or play board games. At dinner, the adults sat at the big dining room table, but we kids were relegated to card tables, and that's usually when things would begin to unravel. One of my cousins would inevitably anger my short tempered uncle and be sent outside to sit in their car, and Aunt Alberta would harangue us on the dangers of communism (she was a John Bircher) and on religion (she was a member of the Eastern Star) - yikes! At least there'd eventually be pie :)