Thanksgiving 2010

            I woke up to green this morning.  The snow melted overnight, a sure sign we are back to more normal weather for the Northwest.

            Our gluten-free Thanksgiving went without a hitch.  John prepared a scrumptious ham.  Our friend Debra came over, and I assisted her in the kitchen.  Mom found a tablecloth, and John and I set the table with Mom’s cherished assortment of dishes from her parents.

            What a feast!  Ham, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, spinach salad with dried cranberries and slivered almonds topped with a homemade olive-oil based dressing, and gluten-free cornbread.  And later, as we watched a movie over on John’s big screen TV, a gluten-free chocolate cake with a whole pound of melted chocolate in it.  It was so rich that between the four of us we managed to eat only one-quarter of the eight-inch single layer cake.

            Before the movie and cake, while Debra and I were cleaning up in the kitchen, Mom was reminiscing with John about the dishes we had used, which she says were a wedding gift to her parents, married on July 17, 1917.  Her voice rang clearly through to the kitchen:  “Is it July already?”

            Our four days of winter wonderland are merely a memory now for me.  For Mom, yesterday is washed out.  What remains for her is the distant past and the immediate present, a present John and I try to make as pleasant as possible.