Food, Family and Forgiveness

Thanksgiving: It is what you make it. It doesn't matter to me that there are only three in my family on Thanksgiving. I cook like Julia Child herself is coming to dine. I learned how to cook at my mother's side and got a few more wrinkles in my culinary brain when I moved to Kentucky and got my first taste of "Southern" cooking. Working in a tiny college kitchen serving dinner to ravenous scholars was quite an experience. What better guinea pigs are there than guys that'll eat anything as long as you put enough ketchup on it? If the food was bad they ate it anyway, if it was good they thanked me extravagently. While the lunch cooks were pulling out pre-packaged frozen food, I was poring over The Joy of Cooking and delighting in the thought that anything Stouffer's can make, I can make better.

While I cook dinner for my mini-family, I always think of my family in Michigan. Family has always been important to me, but never so much as when I left them behind. This is not to say that my husband and his brother are not my family, because they certainly are, but there is just something about waking up early with my mom and helping to get the turkey in the oven that can't be duplicated. Kind of like Mom's potato salad. I remember spreading out on the dining room table to make ham rolls (and eating about half before dinner even starts.) Sneaking apple rings and being found guilty with pinkened fingers. Trying to get the dog to eat the turkey innards.

Thanksgiving is about giving thanks. First and foremost to God, who provides for us and protects us. I'm thankful that God loves me though I don't deserve it, that He forgave me when I asked for it, that he promises Heaven though I am not worthy.

Food, family and forgiveness.

This is Thanksgiving to me.

Submitted to Scribbit's Write-Away Contest

First Kiss

It took me three months to kiss my boyfriend for the first time. It wasn't for his lack of trying, I can assure you. We'd go places and park, and he'd look so cute and earnest, all puckered up. But to no avail.

I've always been a person slow to show emotions.

So when I finally broke down, sitting on my parent's porch late one evening with him reclining next to me, it was a pretty big deal. I liked to touch his face. He'd close his eyes, and I'd trace them with my fingers. Eyebrows, cheeks, nose, forehead and back again.

Then it occurred to me. What am I doing? I love this kid, so why am I making him suffer? Kissing is just another way we show affection, right? While his eyes were still closed I leaned in slowly and gave him the lightest, most chaste kiss possible. His eyes flew open, he jumped to his feet and started running. Did I have bad breath? Chapped lips? Was I just the world's worst kisser?

And then I heard it. He was yelling. From somewhere on the next block, he was yelling. Not in disgust, but for joy!

That kiss was the first of thousands, the most memorable of which occurred on our wedding day two years later. He managed to reign in his excitement and not go whooping down the aisle, but just barely. I still remember the huge smile on his face. It was on mine, too.

My real first kiss story, (well, the first one that counts) humbly submitted for Scribbit's August Write-Away Contest.