My Thanksgiving is rather quiet these days. My daughters are older and I moved out of our home state a few years back. Since they are over the age of eighteen, they now have the choice to throw their own holiday bash. I haven't attended one- yet.
When I spoke on the phone to my oldest daughter earlier this week. She expressed a love for holiday's I never really had. I began to wonder where she got this crush on the holidays. What is funny is my mother loved decorating on the holidays and she cooked big for us. Oh and when I say us, I mean my parents and me, and later on my mother divorced my father and found her a boyfriend. Any meal she made seemed to be a full menu. - Salad or a mini antipasto, main dish and dessert, never mind the snack later on. My point is; she enjoyed supplying a homey sense of family-everyday. This feeling ran over into the holidays- so I can only assume this is the birthplace of my own daughter’s love of cooking (eating) and sense of home. It kind of skipped over me (not the eating part- that never skipped over me).
With that being stated, I can remember too many family oriented holidays spent at my grandmothers. The aunt I grew up with was more of a sister than an aunt. I can remember a few holidays spent at my aunt Cheryl's- but mainly the Thanksgiving close to the end of my mother’s life- stands out the most for me now. It is also one of the few times, I remember seeing my cousin Joseph last. This memory is over 10 years old now.
My oldest daughter is cooking this year; my daughter has her clan to tend to; a boyfriend (lets save my feelings on the boyfriend for another post), her sister, father, a step sister and numerous other extended families to entertain at her own modest holiday table this year. It is now my daughters time to express love through her turkey meal with all the trimmings- I am sure she will do her namesake and me very proud. Still, I can't help but feel left out of the festivities and hominess being so far away from my babies and her first holiday table, set out by herself... I won't see the tree being put up, ornaments being added, the holiday movies or over stuffing our faces with holiday faire till we are ill. I can only imagine it all.
Instead, I will remember my own holiday's when they were younger, which in no doubt my own mother shaped...the numerous holiday meals when my oldest daughter wore more of her meal than ate, and the meals of my own mother reflected in our own current family traditions. I will be a little sadden that I am missing how she pulls it all off, How she manages to artfully not burn the turkey top but still cook the inside properly, put together the green bean casserole and how she prepares her own stuffing flavors and the candied yams... but I know I taught her some of what she knows as my mother taught me.. Now she has the opportunity to perfect the tradition and maybe she will raise the bar a little too.
In my pre holiday- sulking, I realize as my mother molded me with regard to holidays, family and traditions (and so much more). So too, have I molded my daughter(s) in some of the traditions they will no doubt incorporate into their homes, and tables in the years to come- in that regard, I am with them this holiday and all future holidays and in that regard, mommy you did good too.