One of the best things about growing up in a rural community was the opportunity to gather with extended family for the holidays. My mother had three sisters, as many brothers-in-law, and several nieces and nephews. Her mother, Helen, took great pride in hosting all of us for dinner, especially at Thanksgiving.
Mamaw Helen was exactly the kind of home cook you’d expect as a stay-at-home mother in a traditional Appalachian family. She often prepared old recipes passed down through generations, usually involving an iron skillet and no small amount of butter or bacon grease. To this day, no one will attempt fried chicken due to the legacy she left for perfecting it. Unsurprisingly, her Thanksgiving dinners were feasts for the ages every single year.
I looked forward to Thanksgiving at Mamaw Helen’s like a puppy anticipates being picked up and held. To me these occasions were magic. Although I haven’t seen her in more than forty years, her memory and that of her hospitality are just as real today as her home grown green beans simmering with a ham hock on the stove were in 1979.
Mamaw’s house sat atop a hill overlooking Sand Lick, West Virginia. If our family arrived first, I eagerly took a spot next to the big stone hearth in the living room. From this vantage point, I could gaze out the window at the valley below carefully examining the one-lane road that wound along the creek.
After a few moments of seeing no one I recognized, I wandered in and out of Mamaw’s kitchen returning to the window every few minutes to look for my Aunt Janet’s car. I couldn’t wait to see my cousins and watched expectantly for them to cross the small, wooden bridge leading to our side of the creek.
Noticing my anxious pacing, my dad said to me one day “A watched pot never boils.” It was the first time I remember hearing this platitude and laughed because it sounded comical. It still does as I am often reminded of an important truth that lives in a simple turn of phrase.
Everything in the universe manifests only when it is meant to. Your job is to direct your attention to the present, exercise patience, and trust that all good things come in time. Meanwhile, let gratitude for what is and what’s to come fill any anxious space.
Eventually, everyone would arrive and the house would buzz with fellowship and laughter. My grandfather, Papaw Chess, would carve the turkey at the head of a table of six that was usually overflowing. Folding chairs were added to accommodate all.
The mismatched chairs and crowded table were evidence of my grandparents’ generosity though they themselves lived modest lives. Regardless of how much food was prepared, there was always enough for everyone and always room for one more. If my grandparents felt strained by all the people gathered in their home, they never showed it. It didn’t matter to them if more guests meant a little less space or fewer servings of turkey. This left me with two important ideas.
One: Generosity is gratitude in action.
Two: Things don’t have to be perfect to be perfect.
As the adults shared the latest news of their lives, the kids had their own agenda – and their own table.
The main dining room may have been revered but the kids’ table was chaotic and sacred. With full plates in hand, my cousins, siblings, and I gathered round the living room coffee table, kneeling on pillows from the couch or sitting on the floor, squeezing our small legs underneath, around, or in whatever configuration worked comfortably.
It was our space and our time – apart from the strange adultness of the adults. We could say what we wanted as long as it wasn’t loud enough to get the attention of our parents. Table manners were delightfully nowhere to be found.
There was an unspoken hierarchy at the kids’ table. I, accustomed to the role of firstborn among my siblings, was neither the oldest nor the youngest here. At times the social dynamic felt awkward and uncomfortable as everyone worked to establish both rapport and a pecking order among cousins that only saw each other occasionally.
We looked to each other for clues about how to act, what jokes were funniest, whose idea for play was the best, or how to misbehave without getting caught. Although my young self didn’t realize it in the moment, I was thankful for the chance to spend this time with my family, awkward as it sometimes seemed.
I have grown to understand that regardless of where you sit in the social hierarchy – at the kids’ table or in the board room – the expression of gratitude is a powerful form of leadership. This is especially true when things get difficult.
In other words, being grateful – especially in disappointing circumstances – is an audacious act that can keep you going and lead the way for others.
One of us kids was usually the loudest and the bossiest, and I can’t (or won’t) say who that was. And it doesn’t matter anyway because no matter if someone’s feelings were hurt, or whose ideas prevailed, we eventually found our way back to joyously living in the moment.
It turns out the kids’ table isn’t the only place where you must learn to roll with the punches.
True gratitude requires radical acceptance of everything that is happening in your life – both good and bad. Especially the bad. Just like at the kids’ table, a refusal to accept what you can’t change means you stop playing.
Mamaw Helen passed away in the late 1980s. Family gatherings changed after that.
In my mind I return to my grandmother often. I’m reminded that at Thanksgiving and in life, not everyone shows up when we want them to. I know now, although reluctantly, that it’s possible to grieve the loss of the familiar and continue to be grateful for what has changed.
Of the many truths that childhood Thanksgivings around the kids’ table revealed for me, maybe the most important one is this.
There is a place for everyone. Sometimes that place is in your heart.
DLW
November 23, 2022
Dee Wiley 