One of my favorite homemade treats is my mom’s grape filling. It is fall, family, love, and palatal goodness in a jar. I brought one jar to Congo with me last June and saved it for a special occasion. That occasion was Gab’s 30th birthday. I told him it was the most precious gift I could give him to celebrate this milestone. It was a conditional gift – he had to share it with me and only me. It was our secret. Monday night we delved into that pie with moderation, only eating a few forkfuls in order to savor the deliciousness for tomorrow not knowing what awaited the next day.
It has been
a long time since I have experienced all of the fall holidays in the US sequentially : Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. It feels more than
ever that Thanksgiving is a forgotten holiday – there is Halloween and then
there is Christmas nothing in between. Stores are even opening on Thanksgiving
advancing black Friday shopping a day early. It is as if commercialism is trying
to eat family dinner, or at least downplay the significance of such a powerful
family tradition.
I have been
thinking about Thanksgiving a lot recently as the holiday marks the anniversary surrounding the events that led to the evacuation of my team from Congo.
Instead of eating turkey, we ate curry and rice three times a day in a
Bangladesh UN camp. The two days before the holiday, Thanksgiving day, and the
day after were perhaps the worst days of my life. These days are randomly
re-lived in my subconscious.
I remember
calling home Thanksgiving morning with reports of being shot at, crawling on
the ground, and hiding in a sandbag shelter. Moments before crying with my
sister on the phone telling her I didn’t know what was going to happen to us, I
collapsed in Gab’s arms experiencing a complete mental breakdown. Through the
sobs I whispered to her "Happy Thanksgiving" not even sure what that
actually meant for me and my team.
This
Thanksgiving gives pause for reflection. It reminds me of the things I took for
granted such as safety, a bed,
and non-spicy breakfast food. But even more than that, I realized what I was
really thankful for : communication, airplanes and committed pilots,
family and the host of people praying and supporting me to the extent that I
will never completely know.
If you are
one of those people tempted to go shopping on Thanksgiving in order to score
the best deals, I would encourage you not to. It was the laptop, camera, shoes,
and clothes I left behind when we evacuated not sure if they would be stolen or there when and if we got back. Those things were the fartherst
from my mind when I called home last year on Thanksgiving day. All I wanted was a piece of turkey and
my family, not a black Friday 50% off sweater.
When we got
back to Congo after one week of rest in Uganda, Gab found the grape pie molded
in the fridge. The value I had placed on that pie had drastically
depreciated ; however, the things that jar represented as listed above
such as love and family had a new, more important signification. Thanksgiving
will always be that for me now – moldy grape pie.
