Giving Thanks

Yesterday J, W and I made the drive to Lunenburg to my brother's newly rebuilt house to spend the day with my side of the family since we will be in Buffalo for Thanksgiving this year. In a way we're quite lucky that our families of origin are so far apart; there's never any haggling over how to divide a holiday between the two. We're either here with my parents or away and spending the time with Joe's parents and siblings.

This year Scott decided to host our get-together in his new house, which was wonderful. It's beautiful, spacious and the view of the lake is so pretty. The kitchen is easy to work in. We all contributed to the meal and kept it fairly simple.. just a turkey breast, stuffing, gravy (which I forgot!), squash, mashed potatoes, green beans and an apple pie with ice cream for dessert.

It feels more comfortable for me to have the day without such excess. In the past, the tradition has been to make 3 times as much food as is needed, eat ourselves until we're uncomfortable and then spend the rest of the day on the couch, wishing we hadn't eaten as much. In keeping with my philosophy of forgoing excess, it was nice to have just enough food. I can't speak for the others, but I certainly didn't gorge myself and felt much better for it. What makes us think that in order to appreciate having food to eat we need to stuff ourselves? Can't we be thankful and just take what is enough?

My family is very un-touchy-feely so I didn't bring up the idea of everyone saying what they are thankful for prior to the meal, but it did cross my mind as we were on our way to my brother's house. I suppose it would have put everyone on the spot; how to think of just one thing we are thankful for? We have so much.

I'm thankful that this year we are able to celebrate 2 Thanksgivings; one with each family. They will be about as different as night and day, but that's what makes the world go 'round.