Thanksgiving: Family memories

I grew up with many wonderful Thanksgiving traditions. I was blessed to live close to both sets of my Grandparents, so we were able to have Thanksgiving with both families. These two family celebrations were both great, but vastly different. The memories of these celebrations are something I am truly grateful for this year.

The Blakley family gathering was a small affair. My dad only had one brother, who never married, and my Grandfather died when I was three. So gatherings with this side of the family consisted of our family, Uncle David, and my Grandma Blakley. The menu for this dinner was always very traditional, turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, and the only strange thing on the menu was the occasional sauerkraut, a la our church's Thanksgiving dinner (another one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions). The Blakley Thanksgiving meal was prepared by my Grandma up until I was in about junior high when mom, Abbey, and I took over most of the preparing duties, but the meal was still usually at Grandma's house. We ate around a small table, and every year dad declared that that year was most likely going to be Grandma's last Thanksgiving, so we had to really go all out. Funny how the woman I was sure would die any day lived to be 94 and the man who I was sure was invincible only lived to be 61 years old.

The Dotter family gathering, on the other hand, was usually a big to do. My mom had three brothers and one sister and there were 14 cousins on that side of the family. Each year a large number of these people came to the Thanksgiving events. Growing up the Dotter Thanksgiving took place at Grandma and Grandpa Dotter's house in Okeene. The big meal was always at lunch and the menu was never very traditional. As I remember it we always had "pork tenderloin" prepared by Grandpa, who is a fantastic cook. However, the "pork tenderloin" always turned out to be some other kind of meat that Grandpa didn't think we would eat if we really knew what it was, such as duck, pheasant, buffalo, and I vaguely remember eating turtle some where along the way and thinking it was pork tenderloin, but I don't think it was at Thanksgiving. The sides weren't always the same, but always delicious. My favorite was the home made stuffing, one of Grandpa's specialties.

There were two tables at this dinner, the big table in the blue room (named such because of the bright blue carpet) and the kids table which was in the kitchen or the den. The kids table didn't always consist of the youngest people at the dinner, but it was always a fun crowd. I still try to sit at the kids table whenever possible. My job at the Dotter Thanksgiving was filling all the goblets with ice and then filling the cups with water, using the famous "Presidents Pitcher." This was a large, black, plastic pitcher that completely randomly had a picture of the presidents/people who wrote the Declaration of Independence on it. Somehow I managed to inherit this pitcher recently,  much to the other cousins dismay (well at least Able's dismay). The other special part of this meal was that when I was little I got to sit on the little, red, velvet piano bench at the end of the table, right next to Grandma. It felt like a place of honor, though Grandma rarely, if ever, sat down.

After the meal the grand kids would go outside and pick up pecans or play, while Grandpa and the Uncles headed to the den to watch football, usually while cracking/cleaning said pecans. Grandma ran around crazily doing God knows what, but she seemed to always be moving, until later in the day when it was time to break out the famous Dotter cheese ball and then she would, maybe, sit down and chat a bit.

My Grandmother died in October of 2006. That Thanksgiving everything changed. The Thanksgiving meal moved from Okeene to my parent's new house. Everything felt different that year. I remember distinctly feeling like I had moved up a generation in the course of a few weeks. I went from being one of the kids playing around outside, with my only responsibility being filling water glasses, to taking part in making the meal, washing the dishes, and making sure my mother sat down and didn't get too exhausted. I remember thinking how much work went into such a huge meal with so many people and then I began to realize why my Grandmother died sooner than we had all expected.

Now I rarely get home for Thanksgiving, but we have celebrations at other times of the year. They are always full of wonderful family fun, great food, and we continue to make great family memories. But I do miss the old Okeene Dotter gatherings.