Kevin has recently gotten a full-time job after being out of work for over a year, so we are both thankful and relieved about that blessing. Since he’s back in retail, he was working on Thanksgiving Day as well as at the crack of dawn for Black Friday. He’s got a cold, so he chose to stay home and rest up until the time he had to go into work on Thanksgiving.
I told him before I left for Mass Thursday morning that people would ask where he was, possibly before greeting me. I can understand that. Kevin’s very friendly and can be lots of fun to chat with.
I sat with some of my Christ Renews His Parish sisters and the patriarch of our adopted family at Mass. I went over to our adopted family/close friends’ house for the holiday feast solo.
I was warmly welcomed and treated as family. I spent some time with some of my favorite people, including the three silly sisters and their two cute cousins. I have missed seeing the girls, but I’ve had to sub whenever I can at school so we can make ends meet while Kevin gets into a groove at work, so I haven't had much energy left to visit after hours. I finally made it over there last Friday to hang with the girls, and I got a chance to catch up with their parents as well, which was wonderful! We had some interesting faith-based conversations about saints, particularly married women who were also mothers while we ate at the dinner table in the kitchen amidst little ones who occasionally burst in running and screaming around us. Eventually, the twins crawled up on their mom and started grabbing food from her plate. No surprise there. The three silly sisters and their two cute cousins were served first, but the girls weren't nearly as enthralled by the food on their own plates. There's something about mom sitting down to eat that tends to turn up the appetites of the little ones.
I forgot to bring my camera, so I don’t have a single picture of this Thanksgiving. Other people took a few, though, I might be able to rustle one up eventually.
I really missed having Kevin there a lot! It's been over a decade since we weren't together for all of Thanksgiving. I’ve had him at my side for so many holidays over the years both when we were dating as well as since we’ve been married that I sometimes forget how out of place I tend to feel when he’s not there. I did bring him some turkey, a plate of sides, and a slice of chocolate pie which he thoroughly enjoyed later on.
I didn’t see any of my biological family at all on Thanksgiving which made me feel kind of sad, but hopefully I’ll be able to get together with them on Sunday. I have been away from Kevin and my family on Thanksgiving, but it was over ten years ago when I was studying abroad in Paris. All of us in the study abroad program went out to dinner together. It was fun, but I really missed my family and our normal fare.
I had lots of memories come back of Thanksgivings over the years. I thought back to some of the ones when we were little and we’d go to Uncle Rich and Aunt Linda’s house in Houston. There were a couple years when my aunt and four cousins came to spend the holiday with us. Our visits usually consisted of lots of yummy food and various card games we had all learned from Grandma. One year was particularly memorable, because we all were having so much fun wearing the slippers Grandma had knitted us and sliding on the hardwood floors in our house in Barrington. Click here to read about some of our other Thanksgiving festivities across the years.
