Today, I found myself thinking about
Thanksgivings past. May it was the grey,
wet weather that had me gravitating toward warm thoughts of holiday pasts, or
maybe reading an old posting about Star, but I found myself back in the Come
Again Cabin, the little house behind Lewis and Mira's house.
It was a small, but a cozy
house. It started out life as a chicken
coop before being transformed by Don Rose (father of the Rev. Donald) into a
guest house. The Lockharts roosted there
from 1956 to the late 1960s.
Right up to the time we moved to Cherry Lane, the house was heated by coal - Pete got up every night to stoke the coals. The living room fire place was roaring throughout most of the winter. Life was an adventure. It was small, but I always think of the house as filled with love.
We did not have a lot of money but we did have a strong sense of family. That can warm any house, no matter how antiquated its heating system. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter - we would all gather around the big dining room table set up in the living room. I would prepare the traditional spread - turkey at Thanksgiving, perhaps a rib roast at Christmas, ham or lamb at Easter. I was finicky about my turkey - it had to be fresh, not one of the frozen birds from the supermarket. I would get the stuffing ready and get "John Henry" prepped and ready for the roasting. Mashed potatoes, peas, cranberry sauce, creamed onions - I can see the fine white linen table cloth, the food served up in serving tureens that had belonged to my Grandfather Davis, the feel of the heavy Lockhart sterling silver forks and the Reynolds sterling silver spoons with the ornate faces on the backs of the bowls.
Right up to the time we moved to Cherry Lane, the house was heated by coal - Pete got up every night to stoke the coals. The living room fire place was roaring throughout most of the winter. Life was an adventure. It was small, but I always think of the house as filled with love.
We did not have a lot of money but we did have a strong sense of family. That can warm any house, no matter how antiquated its heating system. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter - we would all gather around the big dining room table set up in the living room. I would prepare the traditional spread - turkey at Thanksgiving, perhaps a rib roast at Christmas, ham or lamb at Easter. I was finicky about my turkey - it had to be fresh, not one of the frozen birds from the supermarket. I would get the stuffing ready and get "John Henry" prepped and ready for the roasting. Mashed potatoes, peas, cranberry sauce, creamed onions - I can see the fine white linen table cloth, the food served up in serving tureens that had belonged to my Grandfather Davis, the feel of the heavy Lockhart sterling silver forks and the Reynolds sterling silver spoons with the ornate faces on the backs of the bowls.
Those years in the Come Again Cabin
will always be special to me because the family was all old enough to enjoy the
holidays and we were all together. I wish
I could remember more holidays with Ian.
I did not know that I should be storing up the bounty memories against
the lean years.
One Thanksgiving that stands out in
my mind took place when Star Pitcairn was just a little girl, probably no more
than three years old. The rest of the family
had gone to the mountains for Thanksgiving, but Star and Mim had stayed home in
Bryn Athyn. Mim brought her to our house
for Thanksgiving dinner. Well, we had
not had a little girl in the house for a very long time. Elsa was a relatively grown up ten at this
time. Mim brought down Star's super
duper rocking horse and I can see Star "rocking" happily away. Of all our Bryn Athyn Thanksgiving, that is
the one that stands out the most.
Another special blessing from Star.
That house, more than any we lived
in before or since, was like a friend, another member of the family. The tent Pete built for Mim to use for summer
camps was out at the end of the property.
The azalea bushes that were given to me when Ian died were planted out
back. I loved the living room, with banks
of windows on the two sides. Pete and I
spent many a chilly night in our unheated bedroom, but we managed to keep
things warm. When it got really cold in
the winter, I would go into the children's rooms and get their school clothes
and hang them near the coal furnace to get toasty warm. The children would dash from their bedrooms -
where they could sometimes see their breath (brrrrr) - to the warmth of the
"Utility Room."
Amazing that such a cold place can
still hold a cozy and warm place in my heart.
With thanksgiving for all that love
that has and is in my life - Mama L.