Random Thoughts: Happy Thanksgiving

As I said last year, I have never cooked a turkey or a side dish or dessert and it looks like my record will remain unbroken.

There used to be so many of us that the hosts would set up multiple tables in multiple rooms, and we all table hopped. There are fewer of us now, but lucky for us the youngin’s are having children so we get to watch them have fun, which brings me to my next point.

Sitting at the kids’ table is fun.

The celebration of Thanksgiving in elementary school when my brothers and I were growing up in the 1860s was all about drawing Tom Turkey and giving him a hat, and making turkey hand puppets. And later that week the grownups put a cooked turkey on the table, which started my brother Brian on the road to vegetarian eating (I wasn’t far behind).

Being a vegetarian, I miss “The Battle for the Turkey Neck” my cousin Al and I used to wage (he’d always let me have most of it) but I’m glad he gets the whole thing now.

If you sample every dessert before you decide which one to bring to the dessert table, guess what? You ate dessert.

I’m always amazed that people can actually move and be awake, let alone stand in line, to get into stores at midnight on Black Friday. My Godchild is a pro at it and she always makes me laugh at the bargains she gets – never for herself, always for someone else.

Things change. Who’s there, who’s not, whom do you miss, whom do you not. Life is hard, and the advertising team who came up with the phrase “the golden years” should hope never to meet me in a dark alley. But we keep relatively calm and carry on.

Whether you spend Thanksgiving alone, with a few people, or with a crowd, I hope you have a good day. On the list of the many things for which I’m grateful, there you are.

XO Brenda