It's no secret to anyone who knows me that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. In fact, I have absolutely no unhappy childhood memories connected with it, and I've been able to carry that on through my adult life...I never even minded sitting at the Kid Table until I became a teen. If I have any negative memory of the day, it's feeling regarded as a child when I felt oh, so grown up at the ancient age of 13. But then, that's a rough age for girls. It passed. In fact, I didn't even mind sitting at the Kid Table last year. We don't have small children anymore and grandchildren aren't yet in the picture, and our table seats only six so Joel, Micah, and I elected to sit at the folding table. It was fun, but this year I'm setting the folding table against the dining table in a T-formation so that all seven of us can all be together. The missing elements will of course be Lauren and Nathan, who now live on the east coast, but they're coming home for Christmas. This is what happens as kids grow up and out. It's inevitable.
As it probably does for most people, Thanksgiving marks a turning point in the year for us. We head into the winter holiday season with full, warm tummies and hearts, the Christmas decorations go up, and the aroma of baked wonders begins wafting from the kitchen. But Thanksgiving day is the beginning. No one at Bookends Cottage cares anything about football, so we spend the afternoon digesting and napping around the living room watching favorite movies—usually epics like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lord of the Rings, or episodes of Mystery Science Theater.
Writing this reminds me that it's time for me to start making out all my lists: menu, grocery, housekeeping, Christmas cards, and gifts. It gets a bit hectic for us Americans, doesn't it? The rewards are worth it, though, if we have families we're crazy about and love to spend time with.
