Polishing the Silver

Polishing the silver is the first step this year in preparing for one of my favorite holidays — Thanksgiving. It is a time free from the gift-giving pressure (a pressure I delight in) and it requires nothing from us but a grateful heart and a table laden with all the foods that each family considers a “must have” on this day.
Bringing together the traditional foods at our house begins a day or two before the big day of overeating. I like to make the pies: pecan, pumpkin and apple early so that they are ready and not consuming the precious oven time dedicated to the turkey and cornbread dressing which is standard at the Hall household.
Each of our children has always had a particular contribution to the menu and this year, two of these children will be absent. Dennis and Celeste (our oldest son and his wife) always made what we laughingly called “a mile-high apple pie.” Dennis handled the tricky butter crust, (sometimes having been known to scrap one and start over because it had to be perfect) while Celeste peeled, cored and cooked down the mountain of apples needed to make the pie the requisite height with no air holes under the crust — just delicious sweet apples.
Our youngest daughter Meredith, always cooked the fresh cranberries to make the tangy, whole- berry sauce which we loved, and she made enough to last until the last bit of left over turkey was finally eaten.
Some of you know that our son Dennis was killed in the summer and he will not join us in the preparations for Thanksgiving. Neither will our daughter Meredith and her family be at our table this year because of work schedules.
So I ask myself as I polish the silver, and make sure the biggest white tablecloth is ready, how do we have a grateful heart this year? Losing a child, and under such horrific circumstances, changes everything about life — forever.
Yes, our lives are changed and the grief is unspeakable, but Art and I choose to count our blessings. Dennis will not be here (I have the blessing of knowing he is in heaven) but his brother, Benjamin will take up the butter crust, and Celeste will bring the children up from the farm to help her peel all those apples. We will eat the incredible pie, and be thankful that we had our son for 36 years, and that he left us grandchildren and a daughter-in-law to cherish.
The other absence, Meredith, Paul and Emma, is only temporary and there will be many years ahead to enjoy cranberry sauce with her special spin. She will be making it for the girls they minister to at the Christian Life Home in Raleigh, N.C. I also count that as a blessing.
Gathered around our table will be a new daughter-in-law, Soledad; Benjamin, Oma, (Art’s 92-year-old mother), our daughter Anna-Faith, husband Keith and their two girls, Celeste, the twins and Anya, Art and me. It may take us all day to enumerate our blessings and the food will surely be cold by the time the last one of us lists what we are thankful for.
This year more than ever, we know that our blessings are counted by the people we have around us; not the things we have. You can picture us as we always read Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation and then bow our heads to thank our God for the blessings He has poured out on our family.
PATRICIA HALL, the publisher’s wife