blessing boxes and the long forgotten holiday

i've always loved thanksgiving. my mother looks for any opportunity to tell about the thanksgiving when i was 7. i dressed up in my chicken costume and sang songs for the guests. my mom made this fantastic costume (complete with beak) for my kindergarten graduation play. i was the little red hen.
for some reason chicken, turkey, i guess it was all the same to me.

there is a deep happiness etched in my memory, it starts to stir on tuesday every year. my phone starts ringing early in the morning. long conversations about turkey and decadent desserts fill the day. there are 10 more calls with offerings to bring more, do more...

"are you sure that isn't too much? i can make the green bean supreme."
"i'm at the store, do we need whipping cream, more butter maybe?"

the cooking, it's all about the process, it's like art. my sisters fill the kitchen, working side by side, moving like a choreographed dance, asking my mom questions about how things should be done. she returns very vague answers leaving us to create on our own. the turkey is never done in time. there are quick assurances that all will be fine, just turn up the temperature a bit. who cares about the turkey anyway, it's all about the stuffing.

i always feel warm in my heart. this is my heritage- cooking, caring for one another, feeling blessed, hoping to bless others. probably some mild form of dysfunction i'm sure, ya know? but it's our dysfunction, i feel partial to this kind.

my parents always invited a crowd, old people, single people who were away from their families, wanderers, foreigners. i remember hiding in a back room during my teenage years wishing my parents weren't so nice while jen never looked more comfortable. entertaining strangers, maybe even angels...i can see now.

i wonder what will fill my house when i'm old. i'm a mom to boys and i sometimes miss the feminine divine that i feel when i'm with my family. but then i ask josiah if he wants to paint blessing boxes with me. the gender roles i constantly obsess over seem to melt away while we ponder over what blessings we want for our loved ones. we have deep discussions about our paint choices, to mix or not to mix. this is my favorite part, mixing the offerings of food, the art of a beautiful table, and the expression of the feelings of my heart.

maybe i love thanksgiving because it is the underdog, the forgotten holiday. the one that morphs into christmas. it has so much less consumerism, less hype and yet is still so pure in it's heart. (except for the fact that we raped the land and pillaged from the native americans, but you know what i mean.)

to bless, to serve, i so often forget, drowning in my self...i think i mostly love thanksgiving because it is a reminder of what i want to be in my everyday life. thankful and full, so full it spills out on everyone around me.

Posted by Patience at November 24, 2004 12:00 AM