Another Family’s Thanksgiving

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I recently got to wondering about a curious phrase in the English language. The phrase is, “Let’s talk turkey.” Wherever did that come from? After a little intrepid googling, I found an interesting explanation: Back in the day (okay, I hate that phrase—as a historian, I find the lack of precision in that phrase repugnant, but since so many people young and old employ that phrase, I thought I would try it out. I will not be using that phrase again!) Back in colonial Massachusetts, an English settler and a Wampanoag Indian went hunting for birds. Together, they caught a number of turkeys and buzzards. When the pilgrim divided the game, he took for himself the two turkeys, leaving four buzzards for his companion. Annoyed, the Wampanoag responded, “Stop talking buzzards. Let's talk turkey!”

Ah, a little original-Thanksgiving history to remember the past Thanksgiving 2010 weekend!

Last year, as you may recall, I surprised my family in Cincinnati on Thanksgiving Eve. I got another chance to re-live Thanksgivings past with them as we went to the Price Hill Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then spent the evening gorging on the incomparable Thanksgiving feast produced by my Aunt Joy. Just thinking about her stuffing, succotash, mashed potatoes (both kinds white and sweet), mushrooms, pie—I have to loosen my belt!

This year there wasn’t a holiday coinciding with American Thanksgiving, so it was a work day, a school day, as usual, and we were all here in Jordan. I shouldn’t be too upset—I was just home with them the week before T’giving. Early last week Randa, one of my first friends I ever made at King’s Academy, asked me if I had plans for Thursday evening. She wanted to invite me to join her family for their version of Thanksgiving. They planned to gather at a lovely hotel and eat dinner—one of her Aunts is American, so hence the urgency of having a Thanksgiving meal. Randa said, “I know you will miss your family this Thursday, and it may not be the same to be with another family’s Thanksgiving, but I hope you will join us.” Of course! How wonderful to be invited—just to be with somebody’s family is a beautiful, gracious gesture!

It was strange to be in class come Thursday, since that is always a “sacred” day off of school, but I wore my pumpkin-colored shirt and went about my business advancing my students’ knowledge of art history (we are right at that key moment known as the “Ottonian Renaissance” around Y1K—that joke about 1000—Y1K—never gets old!!). Later that evening Gary (yes, his own blog entry is coming soon…) and I journeyed into Amman.

Driving in Amman—surely you have picked up on this over the years—is always a challenge, and I was going to a spot to which I had never gone before. I got lost in one place—I never saw the circle I was supposed to run into—and so I called Randa and I handed the phone to someone on the street and she tried to direct him to direct me. That didn’t work, so she said, “Just come straight down the street and you’ll see it on the right!” I get that direction pretty often, but this time, it was accurate!

We arrive at the Regency Hotel and go down to join Randa’s family. There are maybe 30 members of her family there, and they are all so gracious to us, especially Randa’s American Aunt Ann (her own triple A club!) who welcomes us so that the poor American souls are not alone on Thanksgiving Day.

The feast was beautiful! The hotel guys had roasted beautiful turkeys (you need to know that turkey is very expensive in Jordan—about 10 times the cost as in the USA) and carved them more beautifully than I had ever seen. They had roast beef as well. They had the candied yams and the mashed potatoes. There was stuffing (I’m sorry, it’s just different here—it lacks the sage and the celery that I prize so much in a truly great stuffing). We also had a whole appetizer course with mini-barbecues on the table to grill your own strips of beef. Did the Wampanoag and the Pilgrim do that as well?

But the piece de resistance for me was the pumpkin pie. Jordanians are not fond of pumpkin so it is hard to find and usually just available, if at all, around this time of year. But Aunt Ann had made sure the quintessential Thanksgiving pie was showcased and fine. As I gobbled the pie, I said, “Aunt Ann, this pie tastes, I mean it tastes like November in America!” She grabbed my hand (the Aunt Ann-types always like me, I have to admit) and whispered, “You wanna know the secret? It’s Libby’s canned pumpkin!" I blessed and toasted Libby’s and Aunt Ann!

It was indeed a pleasure, a blessing to be with a family on Thanksgiving. Randa is a dear friend, and her family was so polite, so interested in welcoming us to their hotel family Thanksgiving dinner. How full of thanks as I drove home to campus with a happy full belly.

For what are we most thankful? That should be a daily concern and pleasure, but sometimes we do wait for the formality of Thanksgiving. People pay lip service to health and family as chief reasons to give thanks. But they are good reasons nonetheless. And yes, I agree…but as someone who lives far away from many friends and family I am also thankful that I know things about my friends and family. I may be thousands of miles away in the desert of the Middle East, but I know how Jack’s last soccer game went, about the lovely little girl in Emma’s class who just died, about my father’s trip to Kiwanis and the good little meat loaves they had, about my sister’s battles with the schedules to get her children to all their lessons/games/meetings (and yes, she wins the battles!) and about little joys and sorrows in people’s lives. No, it is not the same thing as when I could drive around the corner and see Judy Enszer after school, or sit with Chuck and Anne after a good school day at Hackley, but I am thankful that I am at a place that challenges and feeds my soul and that I can still know things about those whom I love.

My mother was one who loved the details of people’s lives—not in a gossipy way, but being aware of details of people’s lives so that she could better know them and love them. This weekend was also my mother’s birthday—that one-of-a-kind Mary Martha. She would have been 72 this past weekend, and would have been asking about what new things the students had mastered here at KA, would have wondered how Mary was doing in Gastonia, how our friend Neal was doing in his job search—she was a one-woman Thanksgiving Friendship Parade herself.

One of the rules she laid down in our family was that one should not speak of Christmas until after her birthday (November 27th) which is exactly four weeks before Christmas. She wanted Thanksgiving to have its place, her birthday to have its place, and then Christmas to have its place. There!

This year her birthday fell on Saturday—which is church day in Jordan. I actually had a real dilemma about Saturday. Back up a day or two—it turns out that the school just kind of forgot about Thanksgiving (many, many things are going on here!) and someone forgot to tell the chef to create a Thanksgiving meal for the ex-pats. On Thanksgiving morning they announced that on Saturday night they would have a somewhat belated Thanksgiving dinner, with all the trimmings promised.

Well, what to do? Have the Thanksgiving dinner? Or go to church and celebrate the first day of advent? Hmmmm….the suspense…would I choose food for the body or food for the soul?

I chose God. I had already enjoyed another family’s Thanksgiving, and on my mother’s birthday it just seemed appropriate to be in church.

While at church my Bible passed over two scriptural passages that, while they have nothing to do with advent, certainly reminded me of my mother’s fervent devotion. One, from the end of Psalm 27 reads, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” I remember that she explained that verse to me once and said, it is not really about patience, that kind of waiting, it is about trust. "If you trust, you can wait as long as need be,” she explained. The other verse that opened was Proverbs 3:3 which reads, “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck.” What wonderful Thanksgiving and Mary Martha messages.

So the sermon was what you would imagine on the first day of Advent: about the anticipation, the expectation of the savior’s birth. This sermon topic was perfect for me to sit and gather the remembrances of my mother. There is hardly anyone I have ever known who has enjoyed those two words more. Anticipation. Expectation. Be it a church bazaar, a show, a birthday party, her children doing something, her husband coming home from work, going out to breakfast or lunch or dinner or coffee or dessert, the thoughts of seeing her parents again, or the impending birth of a baby in a manger, Mary Martha made an art of anticipation and expectation. How she would have loved this whole project in Jordan!

So Thanksgiving 2010 was with another family—a lovely family, and I got to revel in memories of my own family as the Thanksgiving weekend unfolded.