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Thanksgiving has come and gone and I am still pondering the result. I’ve learned things about myself in this last holiday. My mind is still out to get my ass as usual and I’ve discovered that my mind has a way of planting memories that never happened.
Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that, if I’m not careful, I start reflecting back to the good old days. The times when, as a family we would all be in the kitchen cooking dinner and getting ready for the big feast. Aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers would all arrive just in time for the bird to be taken out of the oven. We would all gather around the table and Father or Brother would say grace and we would all speak a bit on what we were grateful for this year.
As I look around the table I see so many happy faces. The problem is that this is not my family. This is not any family that I know. These people are a combination of memories that never happened, placed by my mind inside my brain. These events never happened.
When I find myself feeling nostalgic for those days, I have to force myself back to reality. I have to realize that those days did not exist. Now there were some good times that I remember when I was young, but those people, the fake ones in my head, were not there.
I do have a few vivid memories of real family holiday dinners. I remember going over to Daddy and Ms. Mary’s house. I have one distinct memory of taking my kids, Tamiko, Michaell and Aaron. This is one of the best, they were very small and dressed as well as could be for the occasion. These dinners always started off well but then John Barleycorn would take over. We never sat around talking about what we were grateful for.
I’ve researched my real memories and what I’ve discovered was that we did it different back in the day. We started cooking the night before and dinner was never at any set time. It was expected that we would visit sometime Thanksgiving Day. I would make the rounds over to Ms. Mary’s, my sister’s house and to my husbands family gathering. Thats the way we did it, eating a bit at each home. Deciding later who had the best turkey, where the best greens were, and who messed up the chitterlings, all while getting the latest family gossip.
When I married Harvey, we began our own traditions. He and I would cook a large traditional dinner and the kids and their boyfriends or girlfriends at the time, would come over. This was as close as I got to that fake memory. One of us would say an impromptu grace and we would go around the table saying how grateful we were. We had a lot of firsts at that time and had a lot to be grateful for. Because Harvey is White, everything was cooked and put on the table at a specific time, but as the children have grown and we are so far way this does not happen so much anymore.
Although my mind has a way of supplementing my memory with fake images and I’m missing the aunts and uncles that never came, the stories that were never told and the thanks that was never given, I am reminder of the saying: The worst things that I’ve ever gone through, never really happened – they were all in my head Sometimes this goes for the best things that never happened too. I believe that this is Gods way to help me to remember the family I’ve had in the past and to savor the ones that I have gathered here in the present.
While I didn’t sit around the table with you all this past holiday, I am grateful to you all for helping me to create new memories.
