Daily Archives: November 28, 2015

Cooking, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

The Year of Two Thanksgivings

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Samhain                                                                     Thanksgiving Moon

Grandson Gabe walked in the door and asked two important questions right away: Grandpop, what’s the password for your wi-fi? This was followed quickly by a pulled down t-shirt. See my new port! It was on his right side, had a small yellow butterfly valve in place temporarily and looked good. The end of a week long saga of hospital, surgery, recovery. That’s what he and his parents did on Thanksgiving day, Thursday.

So, we had a Thanksgiving brunch today: prime rib roast, popovers, squash from Jon and Jen’s garden, a rice dish from Barb, then pecan pie and homemade vanilla bean ice cream.

It was one of those children at the table holiday meals where the kids could hardly wait to get away. God, I remember that feeling. Stuck with the old people talking about grown up stuff. Boring. Really boring. I’m dying here. Let me go, please let me go.

Barb (Jen’s mother) recounted the story of her husband, Henry, and his family’s escape from Romania in 1964. Her father-in-law, mother-in-law and 16 year old Henry plus some other family members got ransomed by a group specializing in getting Jews out from behind the Iron Curtain. Henry’s parents wanted to go Israel. They got a flight to Vienna, then Genoa where they were told it would be six months before they could get papers for Israel.

Old town in Brasov, Transylvania
Old town in Brasov, Transylvania

Henry’s father knew there was a large Romanian Jewish community in Buffalo, New York, so they went there instead. Barb grew up in Buffalo. The rest of the story is Jen, Karen and Andy.

These are the long tendrils that any Thanksgiving meal sends out, connections weak and strong to ancestors who suffered, who triumphed, who slogged out their life and in that way allowed the people around this table to come together.

I’m grateful for each one in that great cloud of past lives who preceded this Saturday Thanksgiving on Black Mountain Drive. Yes, even those we don’t like so much. Without them, we wouldn’t have eaten this meal as a family today.

Oh. And the dogs got the four rib bones with plenty of meat on them. I’m grateful, too, for the doggy ancestors who brought this current pack of ours into existence.

 

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Black

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Samhain                                                             Thanksgiving Moon

At 4:30 this morning the Thanksgiving moon hung to the north of Shadow Mountain, obscuring Orion and most of the stars. Luna was the first light polluter. The lodgepoles glisten faintly, the snow on their branches catching a bit of the moonlight. It’s quiet, too, a Saturday on a holiday weekend, so few cars on Black Mountain Drive.

Black Friday has been on my mind. Maybe yours, too. This morning I contrasted the peaceful moments I have looking up at the night sky with those, who at the same time of day, waited in line in the cold for the chance to save big on some item or another.

It’s an easy target, Black Friday. The crazed shoppers banging carts to get there or there or there, first. The notion of a “holiday” devoted to retailers finally easing out of the red into profitability. The mission creepiness that caused Black Friday to ooze backwards into Thanksgiving Day. Trying to find a connection with the holiday of the incarnation or any of the wonderful celebrations of Holiseason.

Yet. For all the blackness and greed and confused motives Black Friday seems more sad to me than blameworthy. The assumption that somehow, if only I can get it, that cheaper something will heal me or make someone else happy. The frantic desire of parents to find the it toy of the season for their kids. The real underlying issue, the squeeze of the 99% by the 1%. Then twisting that squeeze into a way to wring more money out of the 99% and funnel it to the 1%.

Feels more like desolation, despair. Bordering on hopelessness.

Give me the Thanksgiving moon north of Black Mountain. The forest covered in snow. Orion above the house. And the gifts that are my family, the dogs, my friends, this wild and stony place.