Thanksgiving

November 28, 2008  12:11 am

 

For everyone else, Thanksgiving is over.  For me, it has just begun.  You see, Thanksgiving is the fourth Friday in November… sort of like Christmas is really December 26.  I remember when I did it, moving Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The boys were 3.  Their “father” and I were supposed to alternate holidays.  That really seemed unfair to my children, knowing that when they got older they would feel bad no matter which house they were at, because they missed their missing parent.

 

So, even though it hurt, not having my children on those special family days, I moved them.  I didn’t want them to have to pick where to be.  Ever.  There were a couple of times that I broke my own rule, and took them to my big brother’s for the holiday.  They loved their Uncle Alan and Aunt Vicky so much.  And Leslie.  Good grief, from the day that child was born, they adored her.  I can still hear them.  “We’re your big brothers, you know.”  So, for me, Thanksgiving has just begun.

 

It is so hard to believe that it has been 10 years since I shared Thanksgiving with both of my children.  1998 was the last time we were all together on that fourth Friday.  In 1999, my J was in jail, and Rick wasn’t speaking to me.  I had refused to bail him out of jail in October.  He didn’t speak to me for three months.  I thought that would be the most painful day of my life.  I said it then, and I said it Christmas.  Jason was home, but Rick still wasn’t speaking to me.  I wish I’d been right.  I wish those had been my most painful holidays.

 

Maybe it’s because it is that two digit number, one of those “significants”, the reason that my soul feels torn from my body.  The pain is raw and rough and ragged.  It feels brand new.  I want to run away and hide, but I can’t.  Thursday, I made dressing.  And sweet potato soufflé (we don’t do casseroles at my home.  My sons think it is an evil word).  And “mashpers”.  I caught myself before I peeled the entire bag of potatoes.  Didn’t matter if I made 5 pounds or 10, there were never any left,   I made way too much dressing.  I don’t know how to make it in a smaller portion.  There was never any left.  I told them I didn’t know how to make more.  They told me I’d have to learn when their kids were born, because I never made enough.  And peas,  But the only way you eat peas is in the crater you made in your mashpers so you can’t taste the peas.  I didn’t make their corn, or their fruit salad, or their sour cream pound cake, or a Brenda pie.  I didn’t do celery and carrots to munch on.  I didn’t make the rice (I used to tease them.  “Would you like some starch to go with your starch…. oh, and your other starch?”).  I did buy cranberry sauce.  We had a one bite rule.  If I made it, they had to have one bite of it.  Only I told them that the rule didn’t apply to me, because I do NOT like cranberry sauce.  That would always start one of those, “when MY kids are born….” conversations.  I miss those conversations.

 

Thursday was a piece of cake.  I went to work, smiled and was bouncy happy cheerful silly Princess Sassy that everyone expects to see.  Now?  The tears are right behind my eyes, but I still don’t know how to let them fall.  We had a tradition.  We ALWAYS went shopping after we ate our Thanksgiving dinner.  Today, instead of having a nice dinner and facing the mob, I’m going to Dothan.  I have two huge cement running shoes in my Angel Garden.  I’m going to take them and put them on their graves, with bright perennial flowers, and hens and chickens, and maybe a fern.  I’m going to take a really nice bottle of wine from Steven’s cellar (thank you, Steven!) and drink it.  And I’ll get Penrose sausage, and Pure Peppermint Sticks.  And leave them there.  Plus a bag of M&M’s.  M&M’s were J’s thing.  After J died, Rick told me that every time they parted, Jason gave him a bag of M&M’s, and told him to eat one when he missed him.  Only they called them niminums.  Maybe I need to eat some niminums.  But I don’t think it will help.

 

It is my fervent prayer, one that I send out to the Universe daily, that no one ever understand what I feel.  Please, think I’m crazy.  Tell me to move on.  Tell me to get over it.  Because you saying those words means you have no CLUE how I feel.  And that is a very good thing.

 

I’m going to quote Dolly here.  Don’t be concerned for me, because, “I’ll be fine and dandy.  Lord it’s like a hard candy Christmas.  I’m barely gettin’ through tomorrow, but still I won’t let sorrow bring me way down”.  I will be the words they called me, the ones tattooed on my shoulder.  “Beauty Strength Courage Wisdom Grace”. 

 

Thank you, Mr. God, for letting me know them.  Thank You for the way too short time I had with them.  They’re the best thing I ever did.

 

Bren, Forever Jason & Rick’s Little Mother

 

 

Maximum respect,
 
Brenda Adkins, always Red’s & Red Man’s Mom