My First Thanksgiving Dinner!
I had been going through the 2014-15 academic calendar midway through this semester (Fall 2014) and two things caught my eye. The first, of course, was finals week from December 5-13. The second was Thanksgiving break from November 22-30. Immediately I reckoned that this would be the time to stay up all night, catch up on work I had missed and get myself all-ready-to-go for the finals. I ain’t positive on whether I fulfilled my “mission” but what I got out of the break was Thanksgiving dinner on November 27 at the Faculty Apartment of Murray House – my first Thanksgiving dinner ever. My mother was in town, fortunately, and we decided to go together – a first for her too.
Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday to “thank,” or be grateful for, the harvest of the previous year. I am sure, by this time, many reading this would be yawning at the cliche. I, however, had to look this up on Wikipedia prior to heading to the dinner! As you can guess, I had absolutely no idea what this was about or what I was supposed to expect. I figured out Thanksgiving was a very North American tradition, and most international students like me did not know much about it either.
So, as I had been saying, my mother and I found ourselves among the Cones – Dr. Roger and his wife Midge, his daughters Miriam and Anna, his mother and his grand-daughter. Yes, you guessed that right – four generations of the family came together to celebrate the tradition. With them to enjoy the warmth of the Cones’ hospitality were Ariana (Resident Advisor, Floor 3, Murray House) and a few other international students who are or had been Murray residents like myself.
We sat at the dinner table and a small surprise awaited us. Instead of table mats were spread large sheets of paper with colorful chalk to draw or write on! I drew a leaf, and my mother drew a boat!
What followed thereafter was an overdose of delicious food. Drinks were passed on first:
Then came the center of it all – the turkey!:
Here’s Dr. Cone carving up the turkey:
Finally came the very awesome dessert – a pineapple pie by Bob (a colleague of Dr. Cone) and a pumpkin pie by Dr. Cone himself! (Sincere apologies for no pictures here!)
The best part of the celebration, however, was yet to come. After dinner, we each wrote a small note. A note on what we were thankful for during the year. Dr. Cone then read all the notes out loud. I realized we are each grateful for so many different things in life.
Celebrating an American tradition for the first time could not turn out to be better than this!