Next Thursday I’ll host Thanksgiving dinner in my home.
It will be the second time my husband and I have celebrated the holiday as man and wife and it will be the first time since our marriage members of both families will be brought together.
For a few hours, our usually quiet home will hum and occasionally shake as it is filled to near capacity.
Our six nieces and nephews, ranging in age from 8 months to 14 years and all belonging to my brother-in-law and his wife, are sure to be the center of activity. (And the source of most the humming and shaking.)
This year two of my sisters, one with a boyfriend in tow, along with my father will make the trip from Cincinnati for a few days. Katie and Jessica haven’t visited in more than a year and Katie is getting ready to circumnavigate the globe for more than three months.
I am almost giddy with excitement to see them and to have my house filled with both Stambaughs and Kirschners.
The best part will be that while my husband and I are cooking and scrambling for serving dishes, our two separate families will continue the process of being blended into one.
Even the menu is a muddle of each family’s traditions.
My husband makes his fried turkey and his Mamaw Ramey’s Hello Dollies. I bake my Grandma Kirschner’s pumpkin pie and stuffing, in addition to making the Thielmeyer’s secret recipe cherry Jell-O salad.
Some of the dishes have already become favorites among family members who only recently have been introduced to them. Katie can’t get enough of the Hello Dollies and my father-in-law always asks for some of the leftover Jell-O salad.
Each food has its own story and has been preserved as a Thanksgiving tradition not only because of its taste but the memories and meaning associated with it. Just making each one is an act of Thanksgiving and remembrance.
Last year, my husband found me teary-eyed with hands gooey deep in a mixing bowl making my late grandmother’s stuffing.
“Don’t make it if it upsets you,” he told me, as he wiped away my tears. Smiling, I tried to explain making it made me happy.
I don’t recall ever eating stuffing my grandmother prepared herself but it was her recipe that my mother served at every Thanksgiving dinner. I was overcome making it because I realized that I was now an official keeper of a dish, handed down through two generations of my family for me to make for mine.
I felt so close yet missed so terribly both my mother and my grandmother that I couldn’t help but be moved to tears.
Almost every dish placed on the table embodies and signifies something that the holiday was created for.
Thanksgiving is a day to remember and give thanks to all of those who provided — both in physical and spiritual sustenance — so that we could have the opportunity to go out in the world, find love and gather our families together each year to indulge in the excesses we have.
CARRIE STAMBAUGH can be reached at cstambaugh@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.
