A Thanksgiving Memory

“This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for . . .”

Surely this is one of the most common and cliché topics of discussion around this time of year. At the elementary school level, the answer is often “I’m thankful for turkey, my family, my toys.” High school students may answer, “I’m thankful for my iPod, my car. Oh yeah, and my family.” Or they may just say, “I’m thankful for nothing. The world sucks.” I don’t actually know. I’m out of touch when it comes to teens these days. I think most adults are just thankful when the turkey finishes cooking before midnight. Oh yeah, and family.

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for a memory.

Every Thanksgiving, my mother and I made a trip to Filer, Idaho with the primary purpose of spending all sorts of money at the annual holiday and craft bazaar. One year, my mother bought me a freestanding wooden snowman (and woman) couple wearing knit hats and scarves.

"They look like you and Dan, for your new house," my mom said. Dan and I were getting married that December.

After the bazaar, we went to a nativity display at the Boys' and Girls' Club and then to a local soda shop for holiday buttered cider. I don't recall much about our conversations that day or any profound words of wisdom, just that my mother and I spent the whole afternoon together, enjoying each other's company.

Why tell a story about what seems to be an insignificant outing that could be part of the collective consciousness of any mother-daughter relationship?

Because that day was a final memory. It was the last day my mother and I ever spent together, just the two of us.

The following year, my mother was too sick to make the trip to the bazaar. That January, she died.

So this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for a memory, a vivid memory that plays over and over in my mind's eye. I'm thankful for the smell of pine cones and wooden floors at the holiday bazaar, the proud look in my mother's eyes as she looked at the wooden snowmen and saw her daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law, the sweet taste of the buttered cider. Yes, the memory makes me sad, but it also makes me thankful.

"Pain is inevitable. Misery is an option," my mother has written in her Bible. I refuse to choose misery; but, at the same time, I would have never chosen this pain.