The grocery store is filled with reminders we are firmly in the holiday season. Yams soaked in heavy syrup are cozying up next to the marshmallow bags, herbed stuffing has moved next to the turkey gravy and brining kits. Canned cranberries, cream of mushroom soup and French-fried onions hang out with the green beans and pumpkin pie filling. Chocolate is everywhere.
I got into the spirit of Thanksgiving the other night on my way home from work, stopping in to buy a few things we needed and then impulsively grabbing a 23-pound frozen turkey on sale. I hadn’t done the guest-to-turkey meat math in my head, but it seemed like it could be the right size. And who doesn’t like leftover turkey, at least for a few days?
I also grabbed a can of black olives. We always had a small dish of them on the Thanksgiving table each year. As far as I could tell, only my mom ate them. As a kid, I’d try one or two and decide there were tastier foods to put on my plate and into my limited stomach space.
I also think of her when I make the green bean casserole, the first dish I ever learned to cook as a young girl. It’s an easy recipe, with just four ingredients, but I was proud to have helped create something we were all eating on such a special day.
As a kid, you don’t pay much attention to all the things you wish you could remember better now. If I could rewind back to my childhood, I’d make sure to take better notes. I’d love to hear my Grandpa Bob playing the piano, plunking out a cheerful song by ear that seemed to have no beginning or end. Or take another bite of Grandma Cec’s special dinner rolls topped with the homemade tomato jam she brought along from Wisconsin. Or breathe in the scent of lily-of-the-valley perfume lingering on my shirt after my Grandma Betty hugged me. Or yanking on the turkey wishbone, hoping to break off the bigger half so my wish of getting a puppy would finally come true.
But time keeps moving forward, and we create new memories with the neighbors, friends and younger family members who now join us for Thanksgiving dinner and add their traditions to the mix. Grandma’s dinner rolls are replaced with a delicious homemade bread recipe from Bosnia. Green bean casserole is made with dairy-free mushroom soup for the lactose-intolerant among us. We skip the marshmallows and syrup on the yams to cut down on some sugar. The cranberries are fresh, not canned. We take tiny slices of pumpkin, pecan and apple pies, just to taste them all. Instead of grandparents sleeping in the guest bedroom, our niece is visiting from college. Toddlers and small dogs compete for attention and toys in the living room, jumping from couch to dog bed to floor while we drink coffee and squeeze in one last slice of pie.
It doesn’t matter whether I get the short or long end of the wishbone this year, because I can’t think of anything better to wish for than the chance to spend the day together, enjoying a meal and making memories for the years ahead.
Prescott-area resident Kelly Paradis is a community liaison for Good Samaritan Home Health, Hospice & Marley House. She loves listening to and writing stories about life.