Giving thanks

I started this a few days ago, and now Thanksgiving is here. We are a small group - just the three youngest are home. And they are a bit mopey, admittedly. They miss the crowd; we all do, but I'm glad they are sharing the feast with family.  The college kids are all at their grandparents, while our oldest is roasting a chicken with his fiancee for Thanksgiving. It has been a quiet day, but we all are healthy, and soon we will are be together. I'm grateful for the calls from the big kids and the photos they are sharing of their roasted birds and fall ambles around their neighborhoods.  And we've had a fun morning here: Mass, pie making, a walk to the beach, a few rounds of Just Dance on the Wii, more baking, a few chores; soon we'll be sitting down to eat, grateful for a slow day together. 

Thoughts from Tuesday morning:

The holidays are drawing near, and I am EXCITED! I am very nearly done with one of my toughest semesters ever, my big kids are coming home soon, and I've got a real hankering to hunker down with them and share warm drinks and books, or popcorn and movies, and conversation or games or whatever they want to do.  I am so grateful that my kids are growing into young adults with whom I like spending time. If they don't want to get jobs and just want to live at home in the basement, I don't really mind, as long as they do laundry and dishes and scrub their own toilet and shower - and take turns cooking. I have one fantasy future life where my husby and I buy a little Winnebago, and we drive around and take turns living in their driveways, and my other future fantasy life is that we find a big mountain lake home with a great wrap-around front porch and a fishing pier, and they all take turns coming to live with us.  

But right now I am grateful we don't have to split our time between spending hours with them and spending hours prepping for hosting Christmas parties or getting dressed up and going to parties. 

Don't get me wrong; I love a good party. I love getting dressed up. And I am really sad that my husband's last year in the Navy is during this Covid pandemic because there will be no last Christmas wardroom party, no last Seabee ball, no last dining out... I picked up a new cocktail dress last year at the end of the season, and now I have no place to wear it! What if he never gets to wear his dress blues again? (which are really black) Will I ever see him in his Seabee tartan tie and cummerbund, bee buttons, and OK City Seal cufflinks again? Woe. 

BUT back to pandemic plusses: one party a season is enough for me, and some years we have multiple parties. And as much as I like the idea of hosting holiday events, they wear me out and leave me anxious about party faux pas (a sign that despite a busy social calendar, at heart I am an introvert). I love the Covid version of hospitality: a couple friends stop by on their evening walk while we are sitting on the front porch watching the sun set with our pre-dinner glass of wine, and they join us on the porch - outside, six feet apart, of course.  This has happened only a couple of times in reality, but in my faulty memory, it may grow into a legend of frequency. 

What does our holiday really look like this year?  My husband came home from the grocery on Sunday afternoon and cheerfully announced he bought the smallest turkey he could find. We did not plan before he went to the store, so my first response, was "Oh no, why?!"  I want leftovers! Since it was so cheap ($5 for 13 lbs at the commissary - not an organic, farm raised bird), I sent him back for another one. 

He bought this tiny turkey because we are only going to have 3 children at home for the Thanksgiving meal. The college kids will return just after spending the holiday with their grandparents, and the oldest in Arizona will be home for Christmas. He had planned to come here and go to my brother-in-law's with us, but because of the recent surge, we all are staying put.  His work has instituted a 2 week work from home policy for anyone who leaves the state.  He'll do that after Christmas. 

So for now our dinner will be petite. We may include our daughter's friend and her mom, who have been a part of our "bubble" since the beginning of the pandemic, but they haven't responded yes or no, yet. I think they are waiting to hear from their older sons to see what if they will return or not. We still intend to make all the dishes except stuffing - mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, corn pudding, cranberry relish,  homemade dinner rolls, the turkey and something green - probably brussel sprouts. We'll still make three pies: pumpkin, cherry, and apple, because not much is better than pie for breakfast.  And we've got a bottle of prosecco and some good cheese for the pre-meal snack, and some decent wine and Martinelli's for dinner. We'll feel festive and full. 

And I'm happy to have had the opportunity to do some good deeds this past week, also. The kids and I helped fill Thanksgiving boxes for a local school for homeless students, and we helped pick up leftover donated Halloween candy from various schools for the orphanage in Tijuana our church serves.  It will be distributed with other gifts. I have mixed emotions about the value of donating Halloween junk food, but joy comes in many forms. I finally got around to sending some overdue wedding and new baby gifts, made a dinner for a friend who is sick, and wrote a few thank you notes for past kindnesses. In between having the opportunity and the ability to serve, the time to give, and the generosity of others to recognize, we are feeling very grateful. 

This won't be the most memorable Thanksgiving, but in some ways we feel more aware of how very blessed we are to be healthy, safe, well fed, and loved. We pray for those whose struggles make this day a difficult one, whether they are alone or just lonely, ill, hungry, cold, homeless, struggling with mental, physical, or financial problems, or weighed by grief and anxiety. Whatever their burdens may be, may God be with them.