Thanksgiving 2005

This is the first year since I left the teaching profession for good in 1989 that I have gifted myself with two weeks' vacation all at once. I took the week of Thanksgiving and the week after. I had forgotten how refreshing it is to be suddenly relieved of the daily responsibilities of gainful employment and weekend chores, how spiritually renewing it is to spend time alone in silence for days on end, contemplating all I have to be thankful for. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. While my daughter was growing up, her Dad would spend Christmas with her and I would have her at Thanksgiving. Years ago, before my daughter's godparents died, I used to enjoy preparing the traditional Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings to share with them. Juanita would help me set the table and get the apartment ready. Last year I spent a glorious Thanksgiving with her in San Juan. This year, I flew to New Jersey for the first Thanksgiving feast she had prepared herself. I had made the stuffing but she did all the rest. It was her first Thanksgiving in her own home, a condo she purchased several years ago. She is beginning to create her own traditions now. As I age, I forget more and more things, it seems, but the memory that stays with me the most from this year's Thanksgiving is holding hands with her and her Dad around her table while she said the blessing. It was a special time, one of a very few, that we have been together as a "family" since her Dad and I divorced twenty-five years ago in 1980. Regardless of the legal changes in our relationship, we are still family. We always will be. I do know that. Sometimes relationships have to change so each person can grow. Her Dad left his home in Atlanta last year and moved to New Jersey where he has found employment and a place to live near Juanita. Since he lives in the same town, she enjoys preparing Sunday dinner for him after which, of course, they watch Sunday afternoon football together.

The second great memory from this Thanksgiving was attending communion service with Juanita at her church, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, and having the opportunity to give her priest a hug and thank him for his wise counsel to Juanita this past year as she faced a number of personal challenges. I realized at the moment I put my arms around him that I truly love the soul of that man.

The final great memory of this Thanksgiving of 2005 was spending time with Juanita laughing and enjoying a hilarious movie, "Diary of a Mad Blackwoman," in which we both learned a new meaning for "Peace, be still." With Shamar Moore, the most handsome male in the movies these days in my opinion, playing a lead role in the movie, I just had to watch the move at least five times though we stopped counting. When I got back to Richmond, I ordered the DVD version of the movie.

I live in a black Richmond community in the house that Juanita inherited from her godparents. She and I have had fun fixing it up little by little as our pocketbooks have allowed. We've been at it for 2 years. This year we installed a new furnace so I will have heat this winter. Last winter I survived with space heaters and the oven from my kitchen stove. I kept it on 350 degrees F. overnight. It warmed the house enough to be fairly comfortable--in the 60s. I had bought a brand new stove when I moved into the house last year but burned the oven out from overuse, I suppose. It's still a good place to store my pots and pans.

I did a great thing for my spirit during the month of November this year. I went to a local auction and bought a beautiful Werlitzer spindle piano made of cherry wood. It came with a bench loaded with old sheet music. It needs tuning badly and two middle keys--the D and E--stick but I've learned from my church's music director that one of our church members just happens to be a fine piano tuner so I'll get it tuned and return to enjoying playing the piano in 2006. My first therapist had hoped that I would take up playing music again. When I first entered therapy in 1976, I began to let go of a lot of stuff including the old 1860's Steinway upright piano my parents had given me. I sold it to a family of musicians and I stopped playing music and stopped listening to it too. There is a promise in the Bible that God will restore the years that the locusts have eaten. I can't get back the years of silence but I can fill the years I have left with music I love to play and listen to. Reclaiming the musical part of me is one way to honor the great gift of healing I received from my first therapist, Ruth Jones.