Susan Writes

It’s Saturday morning after Thanksgiving as I begin this writing.  The house is quiet.  Silent. 

The soles of my shoes stick to the kitchen floor.  There are enough crumbs under the cabinet toe space to make a serving of something. 

The refrigerator is full – a Styrofoam take-out box, a foil wrapped cake plate, small glass containers filled with corn and baked beans and barbeque and lima beans and I don’t know what else.   Refrigerator handles are gummy.

             Fingerprints decorate the window beside the kitchen table.  Small Christmas tree spinning tops lay helter-skelter on the windowsill.  A 3-D wooden fish puzzle is upside down.

            Sheets stripped from beds in guest bedrooms lay rumpled in the middle of beds. A borrowed twin mattress is in the playroom.  Used bath towels hang over bathroom doors and the towel racks are full. 

A dime size purple disc lays on the floor under the dining room table.  The Bingo prize basket is empty – except for slap-on bracelets and green post-it notes and a multi-colored pencil.

The dining room tablecloth is spotted. 

            Tiny colored rubber bands stretch across a plastic loom on the buffet. More rubber bands lay scattered near a pick tool. 

            Fourteen Christmas carolers, that had been so carefully placed, now sit and stand crooked and lean against each other.

            I love every crumb and fingerprint and rumpled sheet and rubber band and all of this big ole mess.  It’s what’s left after eight Grands and their parents and Husband’s siblings and families were here.  

            The sticky on the floor could be pancake syrup or sweet tea or Klondike bars or giblet gravy. Those crumbs might be cornbread dressing or barbeque potato chips or bacon or bread.

            Husband’s favorite Jello lime salad that cousin Carolyn made for Thanksgiving dinner is in the Styrofoam box.  Dried Apple Stack Cake stays moist wrapped in aluminum foil. 

            When our Grands were toddlers, I began keeping small toys on the kitchen windowsill to keep their hands busy while waiting for food or for others to finish eating.  And those fingerprints let me know someone played with the toys.

            Even though Grands crawled under the dining room table after Bingo games to pick up card disc markers, there are always a few left behind.  The spotted tablecloth tells what we ate and drank.

            Ten-year-old Grand almost finished making his rubber band bracelet when it was time for his family to leave for an airplane ride across country.  One of his cousins will finish it and mail it to him. 

            Those carolers may be my favorite Christmas decorations. Eight children for eight Grands, adults for their parents, older adults for Husband and me.  Leaning and crooked, the carolers remind me that younger Grands looked at the bottom of the carolers’ feet to find their initials and placed the carolers as they wanted.

Surely, by the day this is published the mess left after Thanksgiving’s happy times will be cleaned up.  Surely, except the fingerprints and the carolers. And I’ll leave those – just because.

Filed under: Thanksgiving | Tagged: Thanksgiving |