Thanks

This year as Thanksgiving approaches, I am in a very different and better place than I was last year. As prior blog posts will attest, I was overwhelmed and just looking for some bright occasion to look forward to. Thanksgiving and my grandmother's wedding was meant to be a sign of better things to come and the approach of the end of what I thought was going to be the most difficult semester of my college career.

As I now know, my second semester was just as bad as the first in many ways. My grandmother's new husband had an extremely debilitating stroke only a few short months into their marriage, my father was in hospital sedated and on a respirator for about a week mid-semester, my uncle was sentenced to a very long period in jail out in Colorado, both my parents lost their jobs, and my Aunt Glenda passed away after an eight-year struggle with cancer.

That is all mostly aside from the point because what I really want to talk about this Thanksgiving season is Glenda, because she used to always host Thanksgiving every year. My extended family is that rare type of close, where I know my second cousins once removed better than some people know their aunts and uncles and direct cousins. So that being said, Thanksgiving was a large event with the "small" year, the year where some people went to the other side of their families' places, involving about thirty people coming over to the house and the "large" year having over fifty people coming to Glenda's for dinner.

Glenda's house was by no means large, so fitting everyone around the table was a feat. The long string of tables would be stacked end to end along the length of the house. Every chair and couch in her house would be lined around the table, and each chair was needed for someone to sit in. One time I remember my then 92 year-old great grandmother crawling under the table to get out and grab herself a drink because she did not want to try to squish past all the people to get around the end of the table.

Getting all the food coordinated was another accomplishment in and of itself. Weeks in advance, Glenda would start calling people to see if they were coming and ask what they would like to bring. She then also made food herself and helped to make sure we had enough plates and dishes to serve everyone.

Glenda was always calm, always collected at these huge dinners. It didn't matter that children were running between peoples legs or that someone spilled the boat of gravy on the couch; it even didn't matter that one year that her cat brushed its tail against a lit candle and she had to chase it around the house to douse it in water. She just always seemed content to have all her family crammed into her little house, talking and laughing and generally giving thanks for being able to get together with each other.

This year, her twin sister Wanda is hosting Thanksgiving. And I think it will be hard. When I think about how hard it will be for Wanda and for a lot of the family, it hurts. If last year was bad for me, I cannot think of how hard it was for family members more directly affected by some of the events:  Wanda, my mother, my grandmother. I do not wish a year like last year on the worst of my enemies, but in retrospect, it has taught me to appreciate the little things and to be able to see the light in the darkest of moments. It has taught me to give thanks. So while I know this Thanksgiving will in many ways sad, I am looking forward to it because I think it is a sign of the resiliency of my family and I know it is what Glenda would have wanted to see happen. She would have wanted us to bring the chaos together and to rejoice in each other's support and warmth.