Thanksgiving Plans

Holidays are still quite hard for me without my mom because she made them what they were. Sometimes we would spend Thanksgiving in Boone, just the 5 of us, and sometimes we had a few people join us there. Often we traveled to Baltimore and the DC area to spend it with my mom's extended family until my parents decided they never wanted to be on the I-95 corridor during Thanksgiving weekend ever again. The last Thanksgiving in Baltimore was acutally my favorite. Above is a photo taken that year of the second cousins 19 years ago when I was 16. This is the year that my cousin Gabe (bottom row, third from right) taught his sister Welcome (sitting beside him) and Kate and me the wonderful card game Spades. The four of us played cards for hours while the adults drank whiskey and told stories. We didn't care what they did, and they didn't care what we did and we all had fun.

To me, Thanksgiving means the more, the merrier. Since my mom died, we haven't settled into a Thanksgiving tradition that we can all count on. And that's ok, because it's time for me to start my own things with David and the kids. But I'm really thrilled because we've lined up what we're going to do this year, and that is to drive up with my dad to his old college friend's Christmas tree farm in VA and spend the day with his family. This is the same friend that recently heard that my dad had died. The same friend whose granddaughter is in Grace's Kindergarten class. Many years ago, when we first moved into our house in Chatham County, my mom told me that S. C. (the daugther of my dad's college friend) also lived in Chatham County, and that there were like 12 things that S. C. and I had in common.

1. We're both named Sarah C.
2. We're both married to guys named David
3. We both have dads named Bill that used to go by Billy
4. We both have the nickname "Birdie"
5. We both have young children around the same age
5. We both live in north Chatham County.
6. We both shop at Lowes Foods
7. We both brush our teeth at night
8. We both like apples

and on and on. S. C. and I never connected until this year at Kindergarten. Her daugther and Grace are in the same class and ever since we discovered that, we've concocted ways to get our dads and daugthers together. B. C. (my dad's friend) had not talked to my dad in years because he (B. C.) was terribly upset about my mom. He was afraid that if he called my dad, he would bring up my mom and that it would upset my dad and then hearing my dad get upset would make him really upset. The rumor about my dad dying got B. C. and my dad talking again. The silence has been broken and now we're all planning to meet up at the Christmas tree farm to eat well, drink well, let the kids run around, play music, and let the two Billys tell all of their old stories. I can't wait.