[Crowbob]

Growing up, my mom would wake us up (in the middle of the night it seemed like) on Thanksgiving morning to be witness to the Turkey going into the oven. We usually ended up in the living room having egg nog and those little powdery white cookie-like balls and deviled eggs if mom had already made some and black olives and walnuts cracked open with those pliers-like things.

Then back to bed, starving ourselves the rest of the day in anticipation of the feast to come.

When we finally sat down to eat like a buncha Vikings dad would say, every single year, he is confounded by how mom is able to prepare all this stuff for us and have all of it it be ready at the same time. Which, as I later deduced, was his way of giving thanks for his wife and our mother.

I remember one special year when mom fixed up TWO turkeys because we had literally a house-full of family at the makeshift table in the living room of the farm. Just like the bucket brigades of old we would pass the biscuits and smashed potatoes and stuffing and what not to our left. It was beautiful. Once we had our plates over-full, the time finally arrived for the whole point of it all.

We gave thanks for each other.

Then dug in like a pack of jackals.