Giving Thanks

Brothers & Cousins

Because extended family and both sets of grandparents all lived in the same town, we'd spent Thanksgiving with the Heimels one year and with the Fish family the next year. When Christmas came, it was the opposite - if we'd dined with Danny and Grandaddy for Thanksgiving, we'd gather around Grandma Heimel's big table in the apartment over Heimel's Market for Christmas.

At both Thanksgiving tables, there were some traditional dishes I'd pass politely on to the next person without taking a helping - oyster stuffing, gravy with giblets, creamed onions, squash, mincemeat pie.

But I loved my mother's molded cranberry salad. She brought the old heavy Enterprise food grinder out of the pantry and clamped it to the enameled  countertop she'd pull out of the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes I'd help to grind the cranberries, walnuts, oranges and to add to the jello, dumping the mixture into the ring mold to chill. Probably there was a mayonnaise dressing in a custard cup in the middle when it was turned out on a platter lined with iceberg lettuce leaves.

I looked forward to the relish tray with its assortment of pickles from sweet gherkins to the green tomato pickles that Grandaddy so loved, celery sticks and pimento-stuffed green olives. That was a fixture at the Fish table, always set with the blue and white Spode china, with matching serving dishes, and gleaming polished silverware. It seemed the kitchen was always steamy, and someone would open the back door for cool fresh air. There were always the pre-dinner cocktails – Manhattans, probably. I think I can remember the year they all had a little bit too much Thanksgiving cheer, leading to a very late dinner but perhaps it's only because it became family legend.

The Heimels always did things differently. There were no pre-dinner cocktails there and the china was from Limoges. Dad Dad and Grandma took their places at the head and foot of the table with Grandma closest to the kitchen. We listen to Uncle Roy share the blessing and then Dad Dad got to work on carving the turkey to order. Sometimes there were shrimp cocktails (but perhaps that was Christmas) and sometimes my father had his oysters raw in a little dish in addition to the oyster stuffing that was scooped from the front of the bird.

This year, there will be no gathering around Grandma Heimel's big table that fills Paul & Lugene's dining room today. We won't have a "Friendsgiving" celebration with our Washington family and won't share a wild turkey feast with our son's inlaws. Instead, I'm going to attempt Ina Garten's turkey roulade from a recipe I read in the New York Times and we'll harvest the Brussels Sprouts I've been keeping watch over all year in the high tunnel. My mom's making an apple pie from our Northern Spy apples and will furnish the cranberries but the molded cranberry salad will have to wait for another year! 

Vivaudou And Me

With life in the present presenting so many challenges, it's appealing to turn to the past and disappear for hours in boxes of musty old papers and photographs. I share this escape with my 97-year-old mother who's spent countless hours with old family records and photos. She delights in bringing me little gems like the photo below.

That's my great grandmother MeMe, (Anna Warner Stevens) on the right, with her daughter, Mildred Stevens Knox on the left. My mother had written that information on the back of the photo and had also scrawled year ???

Have you ever put a magnifying glass to work on old photographs? I am intrigued by the details revealed, like Aunt Mildred's beautiful boots and the way her collar is turned up. I look at her face and think about the old lady with deep set eyes who came to Thanksgiving dinner in Danny and Grandaddy's dining room on North Main Street.

The bench they're sitting on appears to be made from twigs and there's a jacket hanging over MeMe's shoulder. It appears they're in the country but, of course, Coudersport looked very different in those days.

MeMe's hair is styled as I remember it too, though in my memory the little bun at the back of her head was gray. And then, I looked closely at what was in MeMe's hand.

Vivaudou, I read, and just a few keystrokes on my computer brought me to this.

It's an advertisement for Mavis perfume, most likely on the back cover of The Ladies Home Journal, and dated 1920. In 1920, Aunt Mildred would have been 35, mother of three little girls, and MeMe was 55.

Election Day

I first voted in a Presidential election in 1972, on November 7, only a month after my 21st birthday. Arthur and I were living in Coudersport, in an apartment above Uncle Roy's grocery store. Our apartment, with its big window looking out on Main Street, was the headquarters for the Potter County for McGovern campaign. It was my first foray into local politics, rubbing elbows with the Galeton Democratic machine and the County Chairman, Earl Howard. To say there were few supporters of George McGovern among the old-school Potter County Dems is an understatement.

Our support of the candidate who opposed the Vietnam War amid all the social unrest in the nation sowed discord within our strongly-Republican families, though some chalked-up our political leanings on our youth and "idealistic" viewpoint. Those times were especially difficult for my father, a World War II veteran with memories of his days as a tailgunner on a Flying Fortress.

I look back on Election Day 1972 with some memories in sharp focus - walking through fallen leaves on the sidewalks of Coudersport in the sunshine, musing how normal that it seemed when the world was falling down around us. Then there was the red corduroy pant suit I chose to wear that day with its wide bell-bottom trousers and jacket with wide lapels, a soft white blouse underneath.

What I don't remember is voting. It must have been in the courthouse and I know it was on a paper ballot but that memory cannot be coaxed to the surface. I remember driving to various polling locations in the Opel Cadet, popping in to places like the town hall in Millport (still remembering that visit every time I drive by there all these years later) to see how the election was going. The old ladies sitting in their semi-circle with the books spread out around them, trying to be polite but smirking at the thought of anyone but Nixon winning the election.

And when returns began pouring it, chronicled on our black and white television by Walter Cronkite, no one was surprised by anything other than the huge margin of victory by Nixon - a man would would later resign in disgrace.

I was indeed idealistic in 1972 and believed McGovern's words: "I seek the presidency because I believe deeply in the American promise and can no longer accept the diminishing of that promise ... I make one pledge above all others: to seek and speak the truth with all the resources of mind and spirit I command. .. I seek to call American home to those principles that gave us birth."

I've voted in every presidential election since 1972, casting my lot with some winners but many more losers. I've spent the bulk of my life amid folks with vastly different world views as Arthur and I raised our family on this piece of land we love. We've claimed our places here, earning our livings, volunteering to bring music to enrich the collective life of the community in the Arts Council, working to support the public library, participating in a faith community.

Through these years, we've sat beside friends with different beliefs at church, in the community choir, in the conference room at work, in the restaurant and in the bleachers at the basketball game. Sometimes we'd talk together, Sometimes we'd keep quiet. Sometimes they would keep quiet. And through those years, while the chill of disagreement might swirl in the air, never did the icy hate threaten the community we've built together.

But in the recent years, things have changed. While we might disagree about how and why things have changed,  I believe we can agree that indeed things are very different. It's the difference between the chilly breeze of November and the icy winds of January.

Today, Election Day 2020, dawned with waves of anxiety crashing in on me despite my best efforts to breathe deeply. I hear the washing machine spinning in the laundry room downstairs. The school bus rumbled by right on schedule. The smell of eggs frying in the kitchen comes to me, mingled with the slightly scorched smell from coffee that's been on the warmer too long. It seems normal.

But there are so many things that are not normal. It's not felt normal for a very long time. These days, there's no way to sit down with folks sharing different points of view, and it's not just because of Covid-19.

This morning, I wish I had the glittery magic mirror Miss Nancy stared out from at the end of Romper Room School on tv: "Romper, bomber, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, how are we ever going to find a new way?"