Each year as Thanksgiving approaches, the pressure mounts. It’s not about where everyone will go (our house, of course) or if the turkey will be dry (it will, of course) or when the aunts will arrive (late, of course). It’s the yearly albeit welcome pressure handed down to me from my grandmother over 30 years ago to preserve the memories we made in the last 12 months.
They’re not the memories of photos in an album or of words in a journal. They’re the memories printed, with humor and sentimentality, on tiny, folded place cards—previously in her perfect penmanship and now in my careful cursive.
An Austrian immigrant with a life defined by hard work, my grandmother was not all that demonstrative in her affection. She showed her love best in her authentic recipes and stories of the homeland. Her dream of becoming a teacher and a writer could never be realized with a limited eighth-grade education, but she found a way to do both through her only granddaughter—instructing me in the art of making a savory goulash and modeling how to write from the heart, which she did each year at Thanksgiving.
In her house smelling of brined turkey and mince pie, we would find one of those tiny, folded place cards, sitting alone on her bone china plates. No one could peek until after the blessing, which my grandfather said with special reverence, but then, we rushed to open them. What did Gram write about us this year? we wondered, quickly reading her four-line poems. My dad’s detailed his new bright blue pick-up. My brother, a soccer goalie, shared his on the team’s winning record. My aunt’s November birthday, which often fell on the holiday, was the focus of hers. We’d laugh and smile at each one, until my grandmother read hers.
Unlike ours about light-hearted events, hers was always a prayer, an original one, written as her way to give thanks to God on this day of Thanksgiving.
Even as a child, I saw in those verses the deep faith my grandmother held and the familial connections she cherished, passed onto us through her words and actions. And now, I, like my grandmother before me, have the privilege of capturing the heart of my family, fueling the faith that sustains us when life becomes more complicated than pick-up trucks and soccer games.
In reliving these memories each year as I prepare to write again, I see how this tradition brings a special awareness to the ever-unfolding graces that have come our way. As we tell our stories, through turkey-themed place cards or in the oral vtradition of our ancestors, we realize that our family, like so many others, is just one of the great gifts bestowed on us by the Almighty.
A friend once said that these poems are like those photographs in an album, cherished mementos offering a glimpse into our lives of yesteryear. Phovtographs would be less pressure, I think, as I contemplate what to write. Turning over an old worn place card of my grandmother’s, dated 1982, I seek her words as inspiration: “Now that the verses are said and done, we thank the Lord, the Father and Son; let’s count our blessings and serious be, and lift a prayer for you and for me.” Maybe I’ll use her words in place of mine this year.
Thanks, Gram.
