Thankgiving Surprise!

     We probably all have a favorite Thanksgiving Day celebration---one that we remind other family members of year after year, and are pretty sure nothing in the future can top that particular day.

Mine was in 1957.

As usual, my two sisters and I, along with our husbands and kids, had all gathered at my parents' home in Cottage Grove, Oregon.  The husbands were instructed to keep an eye on the kids while we helped Mom in the kitchen, preparing the best Thanksgiving dinner ever to grace a table, or so we claimed.

Mom had done a lot of work before we arrived, and by noon, we could smell that the turkey was almost ready to come out of the oven.  She had assigned my pregnant older sister, Betty, to a chair near the sink where she could make the fantastic fruit salad she was famous for.  (Famous at least in our family.)

I peeled more potatoes than I had ever peeled before, and put them on to cook and started cutting pies, while my younger sister, Carol, took charge of putting extra leaves in Mom's kitchen table, spreading it with a colorful tablecloth, and setting enough place settings for all the adults.  (The kids had a table of their own, and she managed to dig up chairs and benches for that, too.) 

Finally, everything was ready and everyone had arrived at the table.  What a meal.  We ate and talked, and talked and ate.  You would have thought that we lived hundreds of miles from each other and were catching up on everything for the past year instead of all living in the same town and able to see each other several times a week.  All in all, it was a perfect day.

Everyone had seconds, and most had thirds, before Mom informed us that she hoped we still had room for pie.  Of course we did, and had to sample a little bit of each kind--pumpkin, apple, and berry.

We were stuffed, but of course we couldn't leave Mom with the dirty dishes so we made her sit in the living room while we "girls" cleaned up after the meal.  Then, by late afternoon, we started to say our good-byes and each family headed for their separate homes.

When my husband and I opened the door to our house a short time later, (less than an hour, really),  the phone was ringing.  I grabbed it and said, "Hello."  My older sisters voice said, "Hello, yourself, Auntie."

My sister had been in labor the whole day, had headed straight for the hospital when she left our party, and the baby had been born within a few minutes of their arrival.  None of us had an inkling during the day that anything was going on with her.

Anyway, my nephew, born that day, is over 50 now.  We still call him our Thanksgiving baby, even though his birthday doesn't always turn out to be on Thanksgiving day.  He just grins and says he was cheated.  That he was there all day long, and that no one offered him a single bite to eat.


Photo Courtesy of Anita Peppers at Morguefile free images