Ray wrestled with sleep – just like every other night for the last ten months. Watching the digital alarm inch through the darkness added to his frustration. Finally, the clock reached 5:00 AM: not optimal, but a reasonable time to rise, wrap himself in a tattered black terrycloth robe, and shuffle into his therapeutic slippers (the heel on the left slipper chewed partially away by a long-passed Cocker Spaniel named Hobo).
In short order, a measure of Folgers was in the percolator, and a rasher was scenting the small house. “Millie loves her bacon,” mused Ray as he set out unmatched place settings and a couple of mugs for the coffee. Spits of grease shot out from eggs in a cast iron fry pan that was the first wedding gift he and Millie opened fifty years ago this week.
He sometimes lucked out and their anniversary would fall on Thanksgiving – the kids and (eventually) grand kids would gather and he didn’t have to take Millie out to dinner. Ray wasn’t
particularly cheap, but he loved Millie’s cooking more than anything found at the few restaurants still open in their middle-Tennessee town. The farm, in its heyday, sent 70-90 cattle to market annually and was located just east of the Hickman County seat: Centerville. Their land backed up to the Duck River and the bottom land would reliably flood every third or fourth winter. Ray and the boys would spend the late spring repairing fences while the herd was pastured on the upper ground.
It was a good living and it sent four children through college, allowed Ray and Millie a week’s vacation in Destin, Florida each year, and paid off the mortgage 10 years early. Millie’s acre garden supplemented the meat he raised or hunted for their family and Millie’s autumn canning ritual would easily carry them to spring.
He had almost forgotten that today was Thanksgiving. Closing his eyes, he recounted fifty years of Thanksgivings. The first time the two of them hosted his and her parents for the holiday – and Millie cooking the Butterball with the package of giblets still inside; the year their oldest was in the hospital with bacterial meningitis and they brought turkey, dressing, yams, cranberries, and chess pie to the ward and fed the entire second-floor nursing staff and most of the hospital residents; the year their youngest daughter’s soon-to-be fiancée followed Ray to the barn to ask if he could marry her (this brought an audible chuckle as the rest of the story included the boy slipping on a cow pie and having to borrow clothes before Millie would allow him to join the family at dinner); the year that their oldest grandson didn’t come back from Iraq.
There were plenty of ups and downs over five decades. On balance, however, Ray was truly thankful for and proud of his children, thankful for the joy and the laughter that defined their years on the farm and, especially, he was thankful for Millie. Oh, they didn’t have a perfect marriage, but he’d still fight anyone who said anything critical about his beloved. It wasn’t a perfect marriage; it was a perfect love.
Ray finished his breakfast and noticed that he once again set the table for two despite Millie being gone for ten months. Today, his daughter was picking him up to celebrate the day in Murfreesboro at their family home. It was his first Thanksgiving without Millie and his daughter promised she’d make chess pie just like her mom’s. Ray just hoped she would remember to take the giblets out of the turkey.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Image reported to be in the public domain and available here:
http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/files/2012/09/ElderlyEmergency_Banner.jpg
