Today is prep day for tomorrow. I'm making everything I'm bringing today, so I do not disrupt my daughter-in-law's kitchen during turkey chaos. It's so lovely to be going somewhere else where we will be guests. I've cooked a lot of Thanksgivings in my day, but I'm happy to concede to the newer generation. All my kids are better cooks than I am, and not having the leftovers is good for my diet. I'd hate to have to look at a pumpkin pie in the refrigerator and stare it down. Actually, the thing I love most is turkey sandwiches and cranberry sauce. Sigh.
And as you know, it was the Wampanoags who brought the meat to the Pilgrims, who were incompetent and starving, so I do have a long tradition. Maybe the Pilgrims were giving thanks, but that didn't stop them from waging war and wiping out the people who helped them years before. It is awfully hard to owe somebody something. Easier to eliminate them rather than continue the gratitude route.
Well, I'm grateful for larger issues: health, the health of my family, the fortune of birth and abundance in this country, even the contrariness of the American people, which mirrors the conflicts of the Native peoples before. We're feisty, determined to our interests but with a streak a mile wide that relishes our differences, diversities, and the mirroring vast diversity of our land. I celebrate not the several hundred year recent history, but the history of the Americas, rich and crazy and full of dance and music and singing and celebrating anything and everything. And our ability, when it seems all hope is lost, to come together and appreciate each other in peaceful rituals that remind us we are bound together by land and cultures and common interests.
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