Catching up: Thanksgiving review

Happy Advent!

November flew past in a blast, and now here we are three weeks away from Christmas. My middle schooler has had a countdown on the white board for 100 days. Now we are in the 20s. But in a way, I feel like this year Advent is going to have a slower pace than the weeks that preceded Thanksgiving.  In an effort to spiritually prepare, I am jumping on the "word" bandwagon and giving myself "attention" as a mantra for the month. More specifically: Pay attention to what matters...

So why am I blogging... because I don't want to forget what has passed - it's a way of paying attention to memories and thoughts.

I just posted an entry I started and never finished because I realized I am letting days and weeks pass without giving attention to what is happening or the meaning of it all, if there is any.

A review: Much of November was absorbed with preparing for a presentation on the conversion narrative in David James Duncan's The River Why for the Religion and Lit section at the Pacific Modern Language Association's conference here in San Diego. This is the first academic paper I have presented since grad school and the only at a large conference. It was a learning experience, for sure. I over-researched and over-wrote, so I spent a good chunk of time trying to revise my paper, and in the end, I worried that it was overly heavy on plot summary.  Ah well. I enjoyed a couple of the other essays in my section - particularly one by a friendly instructor from Canada who wrote about "The Good Place" and "Bad Omens" in comparison to early American apocalyptic imagery. She was entertaining and relevant, while a couple of presenters in another panel I attended on Environmental
literature were so esoteric as to be uninteresting. One of them, a former Hillsdale student, wrote about  "The Queering of Marriage" in Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow.  At the end of her paper, which was part of a larger project, I felt like she was throwing in some trendy terms to be relevant, but really was givng a more traditional reading of marriage than her title indicated - queer being a code word for strange, as well as a word used in at least half a dozen other papers listed in the program.

Although I had a few moments where I questioned my sanity, I was glad we said yes to going to Notre Dame a couple days before this conference for a quick trip with some alumni friends who invited us to go to the Navy ball as a last hoorah of our husbands' careers. It was a treat to reconnect with our sons as well as to meet up with some of our former teachers and other friends visiting for the weekend. It is always invigorating to be on campus for a brisk fall weekend. We stayed with other alumni friends who live in an old house they've renovated beautifully.  The weekend sent me into reveries about what our life might look like in a couple - few? - more years when my husband retires from the Navy and we settle somewhere into a house of our own. 

As soon as the conference ended, attentions were turned toward the Thanksgiving trip to my parents' for their golden anniversary celebration and a family reunion Thanksgiving dinner.  I was a bit apprehensive about travel conditions, but we managed to miss most of the weather, and travel went smoothly except for a race through the Dallas airport to catch a connection because our flight was delayed on the last stretch our trip. I almost thought we should amble and try to angle for vouchers, but my husband was pretty sure they wouldn't be forthcoming, so we provided fellow travelers with the spectacle of a largish family, arms and bags akimbo, running through the terminal.

The week in Indiana flew by almost as fast as our run through DFW.  The joys of reconnecting with cousins and aunts and uncles and meeting the new puppy, which was my parents' anniversary gift from my siblings and us, made the days seem short.  My parents named the little black lab puppy Jese, an acronym of the initials of my three siblings and me. In between taking turns cuddling the puppy, our kids had time to play in the woods and drive the Polaris and do most of the fun farm activities they enjoy despite some rain showers and cold weather. Lots of coffee was consumed during conversations lounging on the living room couches in between preparations for Thanksgiving dinner for 30ish people on Thursday and the anniversary party for 60some on Friday.  My mom and dad planned a Mass to renew their vows, since 50 years ago they weren't Catholic and planned their wedding in 2 weeks before my father went to basic training. Their original service was in my mom's living room followed by a punch and cake reception. This time they had a Mass involving many of their progeny and a lunch reception at the parish hall with bbq, dancing, and a delicious cake.  Many of the extended family came back to my parents' house for more conversation, coffee, and more noshing on cookies, leftovers from Thanksgiving, and charcuterie boards happily prepared by the culinary minded teens. 

We ate well all week - lots of good bread, Beltie beef steaks and stew from my parents' cows, root vegetables roasted and mashed and stewed, good salads, and desserts aplenty: the number of pies, cookies, brownies, cakes, candies, ice cream, and whipped cream consumed over the week was astonishing, even by our standards.

Moments of the week that made me especially happy - seeing the 4-7 year old cousins, a gaggle of girls, delight in each other's company and witnessing the teen cousins reconnect, even though it isn't as easy for them as it is for the younger set. The middle group of cousins are almost all boys, and they spent a good deal of the week and their energy outside constructing a fort in the woods. My father may be a bit concerned about the number of saplings they chopped down or the muddy steps they carved into the hill, but it was rewarding to me, who worries about the lack of outside time my kids get in our urban life.  These connections are ones that last a lifetime, as I'm always telling the kids, and it was rewarding to see them nurtured this past week. 

My plan was to attach some photos but they are still on my phone, so they'll have to wait for the next post...