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What We Can Learn From Our Mother’s About Thanksgiving

From My Rehab Facility, Thanksgiving Lessons For My Daughter

By Mary Wenger, registered nurse, and creator of MarytotheContrary.com

basting the turkey

I am in my late 70’s and it is during this time year that I think about my parents the most. My mother was generally speaking an unhappy woman, but at Thanksgiving time she was always happy and this is when I think about her and my father the most.   

My mother started preparing for Thanksgiving in early November, and her preparations were all about the details.  The event started when she started pulling out the cookie books. She started to decide which cookies she would be making, and there would be hundreds of them.  One unforgettable year she made 90 dozen cookies, and she always gave most of them away. Thanksgiving through Christmas was the only time of year when, for my mother, it was really about everyone else.

After the cookie planning started, she turned her attention to the turkey.  My father was a welder, so we did not have a lot of money, but we were a family of six so we needed a large turkey, very large, and it was always expensive but this was one item she would splurge on at the local farm. Mom would proudly make a call to this local farm to order the fat bird, and hang up with a smile as fat as the bird itself.  

Before Thanksgiving dinner we piled into the family car and head to Cumberland Street in our small town of Lebanon, PA to see the Thanksgiving parade and stood in the cold, waiting for what seemed like hours, our hands and toes were frozen and teeth clicking as steam puffed through our noses in anticipation.  Our Thanksgiving Day parade was not big, but to us, it was so exciting, and to me, it was all so big. People would dress up and toss candy and gum, which to us kids was a big deal – we would scramble to catch as much as we could in that freezing cold air. The parade marked the start of Christmas because at the end was the Santa Clause who would climb up on the fire truck, and then up the fire ladder to the second floor of the big department store in town, Bon Ton, and wave to the crowd, throwing candy out to all of us.  

We had a lot of food at our Pennsylvania Dutch dinner table: an enormous turkey, peas, creamed corn, jellied cranberry, thick slices of white bread, stuffing, salad, boiled and thick cut potatoes and sweet potatoes with huge chunks of butter, and heaps of mashed potatoes made with real cream.  We drank tall glasses of chocolate milk and for dessert, we could choose from ice cream, jello, cakes, and pies.

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Thanksgiving was about my mother’s vision of how things could be when at her best with the family.  She taught me that it’s what you do by example, taking the time to create something for someone else. The details are what people remember.  I remember how much she worried about where she got the turkey, the size and plumpness of the turkey, the cookies she would bake, the flour she would use, where she bought the butter, the table setting, and what time we would leave for the parade.  Preparing the family for all of the details mattered to her. My mother made sure everyone was ready and together, and she started to ready us early for what was to come next, from food shopping to where we would stand on the parade route for the best experience in our humble town.  Family matters, if even for a moment. Eventually, we would all split up in our lives and go our own ways, and many of us would stop speaking to each other all together, but on this one day, we were one, a whole unit in a temporary glory she could revel in. Time is ominous. Thanksgiving actually meant that Christmas was on the way.  The day wasn’t about the settlers, but that something else was on the horizon, it was a prelude.

My mother felt that Thanksgiving, more than any other time of year, was important, and so to this day, I do too.  

I am in a rehabilitation facility, temporarily, recovering from brain surgery, and may not be able to come home for Thanksgiving. My daughter is spending the days here with me and we are going over the list of food I’d like to have on Thanksgiving day, as she and my son-in-law will have to cook and bring the meal to me.  As these memories surface at this time in my life, I am thankful that I am alive today and able to pass these memories lessons to her.

 

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A Wound That Never Closed

My high school years are filled with memories, some good and some not so good. This is one of those memories that was not so good.

I was 15 years old and working for the family that owned the bowling alley in our small town of Lebanon, PA.  I babysat their children and my brothers, Michael and Patrick, worked as pin boys in the bowling alley, which was next door to their home so we three would go to work together after school from 5 – 10 PM.  In those days we didn’t have automated bowling alleys, pin boys like my brothers gathered the fallen bowling pins and re-stacked them. It was hard worked but my brothers enjoyed it.

One of the other pin boys was a handsome young man named Ammon Peffley.  I found out later that the word Ammon meant Greek God, which made sense because he was so good-looking. Ammon was also 15 and in my class in high school and we met at the bowling alley.  I had a mad crush on Ammon and my brothers somehow sensed this. They were typical brothers, always pestering me about Ammon.

Pin boys

The man who owned the bowling alley would take each of us home in his big old Chevy at the end of the day.  The boys would sit in the back and I would sit in front. One night we were all in the car waiting for the owner, my brothers in the back seat (no sign of Ammon) and they asked me what I thought of Ammon Peffley.  I didn’t want them to know how I really felt, so I replied something like “I can’t stand him!” and other descriptive words to make sure no one knew the truth. What they never told me was that they had silently put Ammon in the back seat and he was listening to everything I was saying.

For the rest of my high school years Ammon Peffley ignored me and never spoke to me.  I was the President of one class and he was the President of another. He would speak to everyone at lunch except me.  He never asked me to dance at the sock up, and when I was a Junior and tasked with putting the sock hop together I eagerly waited for him to ask me to dance – I was very popular then – but he wouldn’t ask me.  He was a quiet boy, stoic in fact, but likable nonetheless. He was Captain of the football team with my good friend Pat Anderson. Pat asked me once why Ammon didn’t like me and I said “I have no idea”.

Still, I would still be faced with Ammon Peffley.  I knew that I wanted to be a nurse, and heard about this elderly couple that needed some help on the weekends so I volunteered to care for them.  As it turned out, it was Ammon Peffley’s grandparents. Every Saturday that I would be working with them at their home Ammon would visit them. He would see me and mumble something inaudible.

When the senior dance came around I was still holding out hope that Ammon would ask me, and everyone was waiting and wondering who Ammon would be taking to the dance.  All the pretty girls were spoken for and I was one of the few left – it should to be me.  I had set things up so that I could bring someone in my neighborhood, you know, just in case, but never really asked him because I wanted Ammon to ask me.  He didn’t. After class one day we (the “in” crowd) were all at the malt shop, and Ammon walks in and everyone asks him who he is taking to the prom and he replied “Susan Hill” – a person I was not fond of.  He later told the boys that the nuns sat him down and told him that he had to ask Susan Hill to the prom. Out of spite, I did not go to my senior prom.

high-school-prom-1

Several years after high school when I was in nursing college, my brothers and I were home sharing stories from our days in high school.  We spoke about the fun we had at the bowling alley and they told me what happened that day in the car, how they questioned me about Ammon and that he was hidden in the back seat.  I have cried many times since learning this.

Michael is now dead and Patrick is too old to care, but I never got over it.  I understand that Ammon married and had children and died in his 50’s.

This is one of those wounds that just never closed.

 

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Vegetables, Fruit Trees and Hobos

My parents inherited a parcel of land in the suburb of Lebanon, Pennsylvania.  To a Texan, this ⅓ of an acre was a smidgen of earth, but in this part of the world, a parcel of land this size would house eight double homes with eight backyards and eight outhouses.

In the summer, Dad decided to increase our food income by planting all sorts of vegetables: beans, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn. He did the planting, convincing my mother that he needed a full sized tractor to assist this modern day farmer. My brother said it was more like a planter of yesteryear without the horse.

Of course, there were four of us kids to do the hard work-planting potatoes, sowing seeds, keeping the rows free from weeds, and harvesting the veggies.   

There was always something to harvest throughout the season.   Early on it was stripping the snap bean plants, then after the beans, tomatoes were pulled from their plants to ripen from the vines to line up on our backyard fence.  Later is the summer, our father, after a hard days work, would come home and with a giant metal tub, go out to our ”farm” and snap off dozens of corn cobs, and bring them into the house. Mom would boil them up and with a pound of butter on the table, always a steak or prime rib, several other veggies, and often an apple pie for dessert.  We would sit down to, a royal feast you could say.

Also around our land he planted fruit trees, including apples, pears and peaches.  Each year the fruit trees grew taller and more abundant as my father would nurse them with his green thumb, and each year people in the neighborhood would help themselves to the fruit, which was fine by him.  My father so enjoyed sharing our bounty with the neighborhood that he never minded cleaning up the spoils on the ground.

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I also remember that, in summer, hobos would come to the house. The word was out that Mom was a soft touch. My mother always gave them a sandwich and a soda, and in those days the sandwich slides were big, thick slices of freshly baked bread, stuffed with either thick slices of ham, a sirloin steak, or maybe miles of Lebanon bologna and cheese with lots of mustard.  The hobos would sit on our porch and chat with us kids, and in those days no one ever thought of anyone stealing from us – what was there to steal?

These are the things I remember.

 

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