So I've been down. I get this way every Thanksgiving but maybe a bit more so today this year because I know I won't be like a lot of Americans, going to family and having this huge feast and while I cook watching Macy's Parade (It puts me into the next Holiday) then watching football and enjoying having the family around.....(Or not enjoying, whatever the case may be) Thanksgiving has always been a hard Holiday for me simply because I am a busy bee....I love to cook and share and this is one of the things I enjoy is cooking for my family....Mom always loved the stuffing and I would make it like she loved with plenty of sage and lots of spices. Dad always competed with my father in law on the mincemeat pie and I think the girls loved the mashed potatoes, gravy and pies (Not necessarily the pumpkin, that was my favorite) and it was always a big preparation and planning time for me. Not a reflection time like this year seems to be.
It's harder still on me because this is the longest I've been without seeing my girls. I have 4 daughters and they've all grown up and gone on to their own interests and even if I was there for Thanksgiving I doubt they would be paying much attention to me. Emily would be walking up to see her friend Garrett, Joanie would be in the kitchen for part of it but mainly her head would be on talking to her friends or boyfriend on Facebook and Heather has her own family and Holly was always going south to her friends. Our "family" had grown and flown the coop in my mind, leaving Charlie and I staring at poor CJ ( our youngest) who felt he had to fill in the gaps. My parents had died in recent year so that just made the last Thanksgiving horrible to us. It had turned into an empty holiday.
Anyhow, thanks to some friends I think I am looking at Thanksgiving differently this year.....We are going to friends that have helped us to settle into our new life. They have been so supportive of our decision to move here...knowing how hard this is to do. They have filled in the blanks in our lives, given us information about the people here, shown us how this world is different and how we need to re think our lifestyle. It's funny that we are watching this old TLC show that my folks had on DVD called "Into the West" and it's like looking at how settlers and their movement into the creation of our nation and we are "settling" into a new country...I think I know the feelings from that time period.....
Today to kick off the Holiday "blues" I asked my Canadian friend to go with me to Orange Walk. Now Orange Walk is a good hour to hour 1/2 away and a bit of a drive but it has some interesting shops and I wanted to check it out. We went to this shop called Boundary which reminds me of a big Volunteers of America....it has lots of new to you stuff and I wanted to try and pick up Pie Pans because there isn't that many around here without paying a fortune for it. We found the pie pans and I also found a dress across the street for a little girl that lives next door...I thought it was the prettiest dress and that she might like it and I bought it for her....(Made me feel good)
Then as we were walking to this fabric shop I liked called "Casa Economica" which has cloth and lots of stuff that goes along with sewing I saw another shop that sold Tortilla's. I've never been in one of these but this one looked so busy I decided to shop. It was funny, I walked in there and you could see how everything was made, the machines they used and the fresh tortilla's coming out of there (both flour and corn) and how they smelled so good! I bought some taco chips, a pound of Mesa (corn batter) and a pound of flour tortilla's just made (they tasted so good!) and the total for all this was $3.50...I looked at all the work it took for these people to make this and they only charged $3.50?
The next place we went to was this store called "The Peoples Store". I had heard it was a good grocery store to go to but I was amazed....I walked in there and it was like going backwards in time....It was a store like they have in the states. I looked around and my friend and I were exclaiming about finding things like chocolate cream cheese, nuts, Lays Potato chips, lemon in a bottle and Pedigree Dog food. I saw Belizian's who live in Orange Walk staring at us and I was thinking how backwards I was...We were from the "bush" and living a meager lifestyle and I had been were they are, living in a city with a real grocery store that had things like Hershey's and other things. We looked so backwards!!!!
It made me think of the thousands of times I would go grocery shopping in Wegmans and that I demanded a certain level of customer service and wouldn't accept anything less. But in this store I didn't care about customer service, I only cared about the abundance of product....I think about how thanksgiving day is about how the pilgrims celebrated their abundance of harvest and how hard it was to live in a new land. They were being Thankful for the people (American Indians) who helped them settle in the new land and how they were shown how to live in a new world and they had survived and all of the sudden Thanksgiving became something more than the yearning I had to see my girls or the loss of my parents or the wish I had to cook and please so many. It was a bout celebrating having made it...hmmm, maybe God wanted me to look at the Holiday a little differently and decided this was the way to teach me.....
So, what do YOU think this holiday is about? Do you think it's about time as a person you looked at the Holiday a little differently?
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