Pondering

 There is so much ritual, roles and responsibiliites to Thanksgiving.  As a child, I remember the ritual of breaking the wishbone with my father and the responsibility I had to read the "Dear Abby" prayer which my mother put beside my place setting.

As my siblings and I got older we took on different responsibilitiies for the dinner. One brother agreed to bring dinner rolls and make vegetables, another brown-nosed and made a homemade pie; me?  Mom asked me to bring the dinner mints.  She knew her daughter. 

I stand incredulous at the time and preparation and work that goes into preparing Thanksgiving dinner for a family. For the majority of her life, my mother did so every Thanksgiving; she was awake at 5 am to get the turkey ready and in the oven and was a dinner dynamo making the stuffing (really wish someone would've paid attention as to how she made it....), the vegetables, putting together the fruit cup comprised of the fruits of summer which she would freeze for just such an occasion; mashing the potatoes, stirring the homemade gravy and the years she went a little wild and served flaming peaches. Yet with precision, annually. we would sit down at table at 2:30 pm. 

When Mum finally got to catch a break and rest she smiled at the raucousness of the board games being played; every trip into the kitchen for a drink of the Women's Temperence Union cocktail: cranberry juice and ginger ale, she would ask if the person was hungry and could she get them anything. !!!???!!! Seriously.....     

Yet, I wonder if when everyone had gone home or scooted off to bed what she pondered. Another successful Thanksgiving dinner has passed; we all ate too much; we are all safe; the board games got a bit heated; we are very loud; the stories shared were familiar and also new; how many years in this house, around this table have members of the Beale line gathered? We have much for which to be thankful. The line holds strong;