Tag: thanksgiving

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Anyone Having Chips for Thanksgiving?

It’s a special Monday installment of Flash Fiction Friday.

I wrote this little story for my writing group about a fraught Thanksgiving dinner.

When I presented it, I got a really great reaction, so I decided to share it with you here.

Sam and Chip

When Mary called Sam in early October to invite him to Thanksgiving dinner, she made sure to ask if he would like to bring any friends with him. She didn’t want a repeat of last year’s blow up about not being properly invited and everyone assuming that he would be alone.

She was titillated when he responded, “It’ll just be me and my Chip,” and couldn’t wait to tell Frank.

Frank warned her that Sam might not mean what she was thinking and that she might want to keep it to herself anyway because no matter what Sam meant by “his Chip,” he would probably be bent out of shape with Mary for sharing something that he thought of as his news.

Mary hated when Frank was right, but agreed that caution was the better part of valor, especially when it came to Sam. So, when the rest of the family asked if Sam was coming to Thanksgiving, Mary would simply answer, “Yes.”

Sam had been nurturing the chip on his shoulder since last Thanksgiving. When he arrived at Mary’s he had to duck and turn sideways slightly so that his chip could fit through the door.

His eight-year-old niece, Patty, came running up to hug him and a piece fell off. He quickly reached down to gather up the crumbly bits and carefully smoothed them back into place on his chip.

Sam strode around the living room with his chip, waiting for someone to make a sassy comment. At one point he almost clocked Uncle Marty with it, but somehow the old guy ducked at the exact right moment.

When they sat down for dinner, Sam carefully and ceremoniously removed the chip from his shoulder and set it in the middle of the table. With a smug grin he looked around. He waited. No one said anything.

Then Mary set the turkey down right on top of it and it shattered. Chips of Sam’s chip went everywhere. It was the moment that he had been waiting for.

May your Thanksgiving be full of love and friendship and community. I hope that however you celebrate, no one is serving up their chips!

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Holiday Gratitude Practice

Since Thanksgiving is this week, of course I thought I would do a post about holiday gratitude. Not the most original idea, but something that I think is appropriate to take a moment for. Of course, I did write a post about gratitude last year, so the challenge is to see if I have something new to share with y’all.

In some ways, it might be harder to find things to be grateful for this year. Not being able to travel to visit family or hold big holiday get-togethers might be a real bummer. It has been a tough year for everyone and the anxiety that goes along with this global pandemic is no joke.

But in some ways, maybe all of this turmoil makes it easier to be grateful for all sorts of things that we may have taken for granted before.

When I was reading the post that I wrote last year, one of the things that I noted being grateful for was our local yoga on the bluff. And one of the elements of yoga on the bluff that I particularly enjoyed was being around all the different people from all different walks of life. I’ll tell you what, I would not be grateful to find myself in a crowd of all sorts of people these days. But I do feel grateful that I have been able to cultivate a home yoga practice. In some ways it has been a great privilege to take responsibility for my own yoga practice. I can be very mindful of the way that I move through all the postures; I take more time than I used to in some positions and I am gentle with myself in ways that I wasn’t before. I might not be grateful for all of the new aches and twinges that I seem to be uncovering, but I am grateful for my ability to discern between a discomfort that needs to be worked through and one that needs to be moved away from.

In June, I did a gratitude practice of listing at least ten things every day. The challenge was to not repeat as much as possible. I mean you can imagine what my list would have looked like without that challenge: cats, coffee, sunshine, repeat. Some days were easier than others that’s for sure, but the whole exercise was very centering. Actually, now I’m starting to think that I should take it back up again …

Ok, I’ve just given myself an idea for a holiday gratitude practice and I’m going to invite you to play along with me at home.

Let’s look toward Thanksgiving and this whole holiday season in front of us and find ten things to be grateful for. Maybe write them down. Maybe put them in a gratitude jar and see if you can add one new thing from now until the end of the year. Then on New Year’s Day why not pull them out and read them? Start the new year from a place of love and gratitude.

If you’re not ready to write down ten things, how about just one? Leave it in the comments below and we can help each other to jump start a holiday gratitude practice.

I’ll start: I’m grateful for you reading this and playing along!

P.S. I will follow up with everyone who commented about the book giveaway this week!

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Practicing Gratitude

rainbow

How was your Thanksgiving?  I hope that in addition to enjoying food, friends, and family, you also took a moment to be thankful for the nice things in your life.

For example, I am thankful for you reading, commenting, and sharing this blog.

Gratitude has become a big topic in the zeitgeist these days.  I don’t remember it being such a “thing” when I was younger.  Of course, you were supposed to practice gratitude on Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t a trendy, daily practice type thing. When I stopped to think about it, it is something that seems like it has been building over maybe the past ten years into something that is now ubiquitous.

Maybe seven years ago, I met a neuroscientist who was doing research on the health impacts of gratitude.  I don’t remember all of the methodologies, but the punchline was that there was some sort of measurable, physical benefit.  Apparently, it was a big up-and-coming area of study because now it seems like there is all sorts of scientific research about the positive impacts of practicing gratitude.

I was recently in charge of the impromptu speaking portion of my Toastmasters meeting.  The theme for the meeting was gratitude.  I did a quick google search of gratitude practices and came across the practice of a gratitude jar.  I’m not sure how you’re really supposed to do it, but for my purposes, I cut a bunch of scraps of paper and wrote random things that I would be grateful for.  Then, everyone had to draw a scrap from the jar and speak for one minute about how they are grateful for whatever it was.

sometimes I’m grateful that I have a habit of saving jelly jars

I’ll tell you what, I did not expect it to be such a challenge!  I mean there were things like “books,” and “friends,” and “vacation” in the jar.  Two things that really got recipients flummoxed were “apples,” and “cats.” 

I love apples.  I am very grateful for the delicious taste sensation of sliced apple with cheese. But there are so many delightful apple applications to be grateful for – not the least of which is apple pie.  Don’t you agree?  Somehow, this was a stumper.

And cats goes without saying.  If you can’t even pretend to be grateful for cats, I’m not sure what to tell you.

My favorite thanksgiving gratitude practice is taking a yoga class and I have a favorite memory from a few years ago.  It was a usual, beautiful southern California day and I rode my bike down to yoga on the bluff.  I was just telling Mr. Man about how the memory of that day reminds me of so many things that I am grateful for: my pink bike, beautiful California weather, and practicing yoga outside with a whole mess of characters from every walk of life while looking out at the Pacific Ocean.

Like everything else, it is important not to overdo it on gratitude on Thanksgiving and then neglect to practice it for the rest of the year. A moderate amount of gratitude on a regular basis is what is recommended for optimum results.  Try to find one little thing every day, see if you feel a difference.

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Thanksgiving recap

A few years ago, Mr. Man and I started a “Thanksgiving for Two” tradition.  I was so busy working so much that it was a special treat to spend some time at home cooking.  I would make all the traditional sides: green bean casserole, scalloped potatoes, yams with marshmallows on top, dressing, either pumpkin or apple pie (or both) and then we would get just the turkey breast to roast.  We would have Pillsbury crescent rolls and that delicious cranberry relish from Trader Joes and a nice bottle of wine.  I would set the table with our wedding china and crystal…it was a whole thing.

Now that I’ve been home a lot more and cooking more regularly, spending two days doing all those things lost some of its appeal.

This year, we spent Thanksgiving with our very dear family friends.  They are my second family and it is always fun to get to hang out with them.  Between the cooking and the eating, the catching up and the “remember when”s it was a full evening.

These friends have a lovely hillside house with fantastic views of Los Angeles and Orange County.  It was a beautiful sunset and I spent some time on the deck watching the almost-full moon rising through the trees.

Once the moon was out, the coyotes got to work.  There were a few different packs down the hill a ways braying and howling.  Hopefully all of the neighbors had brought their kitties and little dogs inside.  At one point during the evening, Buddy, their big dog got out.  It certainly wouldn’t be a family get-together without some sort of drama now, would it?  I don’t know if he went out there to run the coyotes off, but it quieted down outside, and he came home before too long.

 

pretty table setting

Dinner was lovely.  The turkey was tender, there were yummy potatoes, two kinds of dressing, brussels sprouts, King’s Hawaiian rolls and of course plenty of good wine.  I made my “famous” spaghetti squash salad. It turned out yummy again which was a relief!

In addition to the usual suspects, a new friend joined us, and it was a treat to get to meet her.  She loves to bake (a good quality to look for in new friends) and brought the pie.  Not just pumpkin pie, it was pumpkin/sweet potato pie.  And it was divine.  She mentioned that in addition to all the meticulous effort she puts into preparing the pumpkin/sweet potato puree, she uses coconut cream instead of dairy cream for the custard.  Ah ha!  Remember when I told you that I thought that my coconut cream came out silkier than regular pastry cream?  It wasn’t just a fluke; other people do the same thing on purpose.  I love spontaneous positive reinforcement!

Almost looks too good to eat

How was your Thanksgiving?  Did you host?  What was your favorite dish?  Was there anything that you didn’t make that you wish you had?