Thanksgiving on Target

I think our calendar flips from Thanksgiving Eve to Christmas Day. Never has Advent been in such a hurry! But the Saturday after Thanksgiving had to lumber because it was so full of food, family, and love. Our eldest son, his wife and our three grandsons came for the day. The highlight of the afternoon was going to a shooting range, aiming at a target with his 9 mm, and scoring a few bulls eyes. While visiting with them a couple of years ago, he taught me how to shoot a riffle. I felt like the main character in "Annie, Get Your Gun". The bulls eyes were a notable improvement. I have no desire to be a marksman or even own any kind of firearm, but I love learning new things that will enable me to relate and keep up with our grown children and our growing grandchildren.
While we waited for dinner to be ready, our three grandsons enjoyed Christmas a little early. The two older boys oohed over their new skate boards and their cool helmets, while the youngest took his aim at tin ducks "swimming across" the miniature carnival shooting gallery.
Then all enjoyed a roast beef dinner with whipped potatoes and all the trimmings.
I remembered Thanksgiving as a child at my grandparents. Every year it was predictably and wonderfully the same. Grandma would start preparing the feast three days ahead: making (and keeping for future reference) a careful list of everything she needed: pearl onions, dry bread crumbs, apples, celery, chestnuts, fresh vegetables, cornstarch, minced meat in a jar, pumpkin in a can, whole fesh cranberries, potatoes (white and sweet), and of course, the main attraction: the turkey, which would be no less than at least 22 pounds. Mom and Dad, Sis and I would be met at the door by Grandma in her bib apron, with her hair just a little frizzeled, and the wonderful aroma of roast turkey mingled with all the scents of a sumptuous feast. At last she would call us to the table festooned with her best linen and willow dishes, her silver and crystal. It was my job, from my earliest memories to say the blessing. When I was old enough to scrawl words on a 3x5 card I wrote down the grace I would say. Years later, when I inherited their hutch, those blessings were still tucked in the drawer where Grandma always kept them. Then Grandpa carved the Turkey, and the table would become an orderly flury of dishes and plates being passed from eager hand to eager hand to the melody of lively conversation, quips, one liners, and bits of little known facts long forgotten. Thanksgiving at my Grandparents was more than a holiday, it was an art form.
Maybe our Saturday after Thanksgiving Family Feast was not an art form, it wasn't even on the holiday itself, but it was nonetheless a pricelss memory. Our son was leaving for a two week stint in Afgahnistan the following Monday. To see my table full of food and surrounded by loved ones was the greatest joy of the day and to have him back home safe and sound two weeks later, an extended Thanksgiving.