Grateful #21- To Grandmother's House We Go

When I was a kid, I sometimes rode my bike down the half-mile drive that led to my Grandmother's house on Thanksgiving Day. I'd pop out my kick-stand underneath her covered driveway and make my way into the house, which smelled like homemade chicken and pastry. The brick three-bedroom, built in the 1940's, was brimming over with my aunts, uncles and eleven cousins, so we kids usually spilled out into the yard to climb the Sycamore tree or walked down to the "front pond" (a glorified water hole in the cow pasture) Some adult, or one of the older cousins, would have to come and fetch us when it was time to eat.

My grandmother had a stroke when I was in college, and we never had another Thanksgiving meal at her house. It's sad to see the old brick house, which, in recent years, has been filled with renters instead of cousins, stand cold and vacant on Thanksgiving Day.

Story can't ride her bike to Grandmommy's house, but one thirty-minute jaunt listening to "Moana song" and we are there- at a brick house brimming with the same aunts, uncles and cousins plus the spouses and children that have joined us over the years. No one makes chicken and pastry anymore. Or chocolate meringue pie, my grandmother's two best dishes. Maybe it's a sort of reverence that holds us back... no living person will ever match hers. The universe is funny that way. But there will be plenty to eat, of that I am sure.

Today, I am grateful for Grandmother's house. A house filled with family members who might vote and think and dress and do differently from one another, but who gather today to eat and laugh and shoot skeet. To catch up and reminisce. To await that moment when my musical cousin might sit at the piano and charm our ears with the first Christmas songs of the season. I'm grateful for my family, and the way we fill up a house until the kids overflow into the yard and field beyond.

As time passes, we make choices. Do we matter enough to one another to try to stick together? Sometimes, it's hard. Distance and difference can win out, and erase ties that once bound. So I'm grateful that Story gets to go to her Grandmother's house today, and be with a family still working to come together and give thanks.

Wherever your family is today, and whatever it looks like, I hope you will cherish those whom God has given to you. I hope you will give thanks for the past you share, and I hope you will choose to love them into the future. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.