Thankful

I was feeling very nostalgic last week. Maybe it was the Walton's Thanksgiving special, or the fact that I spent most of the week in a fevered, mucus-clogged state, but I found myself thinking about Thanksgivings past.
And, as fate would have it, traffic forced us to take my old route from PA to the Shore, this past Thanksgiving. And my, how things have changed.
I remembered the time I was driving home from Terry's 20 years ago, late in the evening with a horrible migraine and cursing the fact that there was simply no place to pull in for a cup of hot coffee to try and kill the pain.
But back then it was just me and the lonely, painful road.
Now there is a WaWa every hundred yards or so. Or a mall.
Twenty years ago, I was returning home after an afternoon-long Thanksgiving extravaganza with Terry's in-laws as well as my niece Shelby who was three or so. My head was killing me, and so I went upstairs to lay down before driving the two hours home and Shelby kept coming in to check on me, to see if I needed a drink, to give me butterfly kisses.
Another time I was making that drive, it was to see my family at my nephew's christening. And another time to have a kids-and-grandkids photo taken as a surprise for my parents' anniversary.
This year though the scenery that I watched whiz by the window was different. Very different. There were strip malls and housing developments and traffic lights. Oh my!
Driving back to the shore 20 years ago, I knew that my boyfriend, then fiance, then husband was waiting for me (when he wasn't with me) in my cute little house that was way too close to the train tracks.
And that feeling -- that anticipation of sharing time with people who know you, who get you, and who love you anyway -- is still the same.
So it turned out that as much as things had changed, they really had stayed the same. At the end of this ride was Grandma Connie who would lavish her love (and cooking!) on all of us, and on the way home I'd be in the car with the three people I love most in this world, heading full sprint into the holiday season. The feeling of comfort, of love, of togetherness -- even if we can't always be together -- is still the same. And it is for this, that I am most thankful.

Here's Grandma Connie anxiously awaiting Lizzie making her birthday wish. Hannah (the unicorn) had already wished and was digging into the strawberry shortcake. Lizzie narrowed it down to three wishes and finally settled on "I wish that Aunt Linda gets married this year." By then her cake had burned to a crisp. (Just kidding...but Lizzie DOES consider her decisions very very very carefully!)

Here's some of the loot they got. You can't tell Grandma Connie to scale back on the gifts. I mean you CAN, but she'll just ignore you. So, you just can't. Birthdays look like this every year (but Aunt Linda and Uncle Dude helped make these piles, too.)

Then it was time to EAT. Lizzie was ready. Menu was turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes (LOVE THEM), turnip, candied carrots, sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and several different types of pie for dessert. I can say without fear of contradiction that Lizzie ate every bit of it:

Here's most of the gang. There was a picture with me in it, too, but it was really blurry. You'll be happy to note also that Hannah took off the unicorn costume to eat dinner. The woman sitting next to Lizzie is Beth, a long-time neighbor of the Rasmussens and a friend of mine from my days at the Herald.