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Oh, I can almost smell it now…cinnamon laced with nutmeg and ginger, that spicy aroma that can mean only one thing…pumpkin pie, rusty orange custard piled high with whipped cream. (Someone in my household believes that if you can still see the pie, you don’t have enough whipped cream.) Maybe it’s the butternut flavor of pecan pie or the fluffy texture of banana or coconut cream that makes your lips turn up at the corners. No matter. There will be plenty of reasons to smile this Thanksgiving.

I guess most of our attitudes about Thanksgiving and the holidays in general are linked to very specific childhood recollections. It’s funny how the aroma of bread baking in the oven and giblets simmering in broth with onions, celery, and sage can instantly transport me back to my mother’s kitchen and a little red Chromecraft table where I sat and watched Mom prepare her dressing on Thanksgiving Eve and those night-before scents are as much a part of the memory as the holiday itself.

Smoke hung thick in the air as neighbors joined dad in the rites of fall….leaf burning. I can remember the strange mingling of burning leaves in the backyard and mom’s pumpkin pie in the kitchen, an odd collaboration of scents that together meant mom and dad are here and all’s right with the world.

Of course it wasn’t just the olfactory glands that were stimulated at this time of year. It was a sensory delight.

There are sounds that I will always associate with Thanksgiving, like the hissing and chugging of mom’s pressure cooker and dishes rattling in the sink. Mom got the “good” china down and washed it for its yearly appearance – good meaning less chipped. There was the sound of leaves crunching as family trudged up the walk to swing open the picket gate. There was the smoke alarm that inevitably went off when the turkey boiled over in the oven. There was talking and laughing, and I can still hear the tapping of game pieces on a cardboard sidewalk and marbles rolling around inside a metal Chinese checkerboard. After a while there was the snoring of those whose intention was to watch football, but fell victim to tryptophan’s curse.

There were sights to behold as well. There were leaves of red and gold that created a gorgeous canopy overhead and then fell to the ground when nudged by a cold fall rain. The little hitch-hikers stuck to the soles of our shoes and we tracked them onto the freshly vacuumed carpet. There were bright orange pumpkins stacked high on bales of straw and Indian corn tied with twine begging to be bought at the open air market down on Broadway and Main.

Thanksgiving morning meant the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on television…the real deal, not the abbreviated version that’s shown today and pre-empted by local copycats. We watched it to the very end when that nice old man in the red suit arrived.

Thanksgiving Day brought out the long, “white” table cloth. It was stained with sweet tea and giblet gravy. The stylish centerpiece was a “turkey” made from a pineapple laid on its side. Googly button eyes and red yarn crocheted to resemble a neck and head were affixed with straight pins to the “body” of the pineapple and the bushy pineapple top created a properly fanned tail. The pineapple turkey was ogled and admired until mom’s turkey came out of the oven, then was set aside like your fourth grade crush for the real thing.

I guess the thing that I will always remember is how the dining room table expanded over the years. As her kids married and had children of their own, mom added to the table’s length to accommodate more and more. The family grew from the original seven to the point where mom was somehow fitting more than twenty-five people into her tiny dining area, and the table stretched well into the living room. At 93 she has now passed the holiday dinner baton to my sister, Darlene, who has fed nearly forty family members and friends at her Thanksgiving Day table.

It reminds me of a picture (artist unknown) that I first saw in the seventies. It was a table spread with white linen and adorned with fine china and gold utensils and it stretched as far as the eye could see and disappeared into the clouds. It was just a reminder of the invitation the Lord has extended to us. There is room for more at His table and the old song says it well: “Come and dine, the Master calleth, come and dine. You can feast at Jesus’ table all the time. He who fed the multitude, turned the water into wine, to the hungry calleth now, come and dine.”

Have a great fall and a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Janice Crow

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