“I’m thankful for every moment.”—Al Green, singer and songwriter.
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The holiday season is the best. I’ve long contended Thanksgiving preceding Christmas is not by coincidence. It’s a subtle reminder to be thankful for the most joyous season and to end the year on high note.
My blessings are many. And long is the list of things for which I am thankful. Including conversation about Thanksgiving memories with a former business associate a few years ago.
While wrapping up holiday week business with Wachelle at the Dallas PR firm employed by the company for which I worked, she said something that resonated with me the rest of the day.
“We are scheduled for next week! Yay…” she responded to my submissions. I countered with the good news that we also had another couple weeks worth of social media programs in the works.
“My grandmomma would say, ‘Stop showing out,’” she countered.
“I like your grandmomma’s sayings,” I told her. “Mine was a wise woman for someone whose education went only to the 8th grade. She had a huge influence on my life.”
“Don’t you miss her,” Wachelle asked? “I really miss my grandmamma’s cooking.”
I agreed, remembering the meals at granny’s house. Then for the rest of the day, all I could think about was those holiday and Sunday dinners.
Truthfully, any Sunday dinner prepared by my father’s mother was the equivalent of a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. She stopped preparing festive meals when my grandfather died in 1967, but I remember her cooking like it was yesterday.
It was a yesterday time when families ate more meals at home. The fast food boom was a few happy meals down the road, and eating out at a “real” restaurant was a treat for rare occasions. It was also a yesterday when a meal at our home in Mount Pleasant was on the table precisely coordinated with dad’s arrival from work. Not being at the table at that time was not an option. That is, unless you were so badly incapacitated that walking was out of the question.
Also not an option was deciding whether mom’s menu coincided with your taste buds. You ate what was on the table without criticism or comment—unless it was a favorable comment about how good it was.
Although it was the age of “eat what your momma put on the table,” there was no way even the pickiest eater was going to leave granny’s table hungry on any day. The table that occupied my grandmother’s dining room and now resides in mine, was filled to capacity with choices. Fried chicken or ham, usually both. Every imaginable vegetable, salad and casserole was there. And hot rolls. If that wasn’t enough, the aroma of a fresh baked pie wafted from the kitchen as a reminder to save a little room.
The cooking was a labor of love, and meals were always on the table on time. No small feat for a Sunday dinner considering everyone at the Pittsburg Methodist Church knew my grandmother was critically ill if she was not in “her pew” for worship service. It was a feat she accomplished only by hours spent in the kitchen Saturday night and early Sunday morning before church. Something that never dawned on me as a child. I thought the meals were just another form of “grandmother’s magic.”
It was hard to notice behind the scenes work that our parents and grandparents put into family get togethers as kids. We were running through fall leaves in the yard. Looking for pecans under huge trees that lined the yard.
Smell is purported to be one of the strongest sensory preceptors linked to memory. I know that it’s true. Even today in an age of eating most meals out, a whiff of home cooking reminds me of family gatherings and of food at granny’s house that I haven’t tasted in almost 60 years.
“Don’t you miss her,” Wachelle’s words echoed in my mind last week? I do miss her and I’m thankful for the memories of many Thanksgiving pasts she gave me. I’m also thankful for the values my grandparents and parents gave me regarding family traditions that have fashioned my Thanksgivings for a lifetime. And every moment of the memories I’m still making.
Best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving and all of the memories that go with the season.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are published in these Texas newspapers: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
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