thanksgiving memories

my whole life i have watched and been a willing and sometimes unwilling participant in cooking the thanksgiving feast. my mom and grandmothers would start weeks in advance planning and preparing. the night before thanksgiving was always a flurry of cornbread stuffing and apple peelings. my mom dubbed me the official stuffing sniffer. it was my job to make sure she had just the right amount of sage in the stuffing. it was also my job to peel hundreds of apples. for the hundreds of apple pies and apple cakes she would bake. we would never eat them all because she gave most of them away. to teachers and coworkers and the mailman. thats what we did back in the day. why give your friends a store bought gift when you could give something homebaked. so between thanksgiving and christmas we made lots of baked goods. fudge and peanut brittle and cookies and cakes and pies. lots and lots of pies. we would always tease my oldest brother because his favorite pie was raisin. have you ever seen a raisin pie? its not a pretty sight.

my best thanksgiving memory was when i was about 8 and my mom was carving the turkey and the knife slipped and cut her hand. she started crying and before anyone could blink my grandfather gathered her up into his lap and rocked her and told her it would be ok. i will always hold that memory in my heart as extra-special. i realized then that my mom was my grandfathers little girl and even though she was a grown women she still needed her dad to make everything better. don't we all just want our dads to make things better. for some of us it will never be our earthly dads but we do have a Heavenly Father who is always faithful and always ready to rock us when we need it.