Ghosts of Thanksgiving

I got to thinking about Thanksgiving of my childhood in Wilton. My mom’s sister Susan and her husband Hank used to come so it was a small party. In the early years living in Wilton our dining room was right off the upstairs kitchen. That was when our house just had the upstairs kitchen and the maid quarters kitchen, not that we had a maid. It was just the four of us before Janet was born. And when Janet was born the maid quarter’s kitchen became her bedroom, still with the refrigerator in it.

I came across this photo of Margaret and me eating breakfast with my Dad sitting with us. I was probably about eight and Margaret was five then. We had an antique hutch table that my mother still has in her breakfast room, and a tall antique side board, which is still in my mother’s dining room.

The room was all windows with a window bench along one wall. Inside those hidden benches were lots of serving trays and other items my parents used for the many parties they threw.

We ate all our meals at that hutch table until we built our third kitchen and had a bigger table adjoining that kitchen. So Thanksgiving was just like any other meal at our one and only table. The only difference was my mother would put out these little pilgrim and Indian candles we never were allowed to light. Over the years the candles got dustier and dustier because they lived in one of those window benches in the off season.

The one thing about looking at this picture is the room was smaller than I remember it.

I think our childhood homes are always bigger in our memories. It has to be that we were smaller so our perspective was different.

We are having a small Thanksgiving this year. Just my Mom and Carter. My Aunt Susan passed away a few years ago and Uncle Hank has lost his memory. So I will remember for all of us. The foods we eat are similar to the ones my father made for those Thanksgivings back in the late 60’s. I started cooking the stewed tomatoes today, the same way my grandmother taught my father to do them. They take so long we only have them on Thanksgiving, but since I have been having them for the last sixty years once a year they became an institution.

It is not quite the same without my father. He always was the cook until he taught me to cook. His thanksgiving menu never varied. He loved creamed onions and giblet gravy. Now that he is gone I never have to have giblets in my gravy again, but I would if only he could be at the table one more time.