Thanksgiving Memories

Yikes! Next week is Thanksgiving again — already!  

The holiday is always a good time to remember what’s good about your life, even if a messy pile of Not So Good Just Now loiters in the corner. 

To spark happy memories from years gone by, I meandered through my cellphone photos taken late in Novembers past. I’m surprised by what I’d forgotten — or if not forgotten, at least I'd mislaid the details about when certain events had taken place. 

Have a look at some of my holiday highlights here, and then I hope you enjoy searching for your own.

To begin with, last year's Thanksgiving dinner at Susan's was scrumptious! Here's my plate:

Two years ago, I brought a Turkey Bowling game to dinner, with plastic pins shaped like life-sized turkey drumsticks so family members could bowl in the long hall. Alas, no pictures — but I do remember some of us hid a turkey leg or two around the house before we left.  

(Full Disclosure: I also was responsible for the rubber ducks sporting Thanksgiving attire, the Wind-Up Fuzzy Bunny/Chicken Races at Easter, and who in the family will ever forget our Wind-Up Moose Races one Christmas? Okay, I'm the Silly Holiday Guest. LOVE wind-up toys.) 

I Don't Do Crafts — and I even have a button that says that. However, for a few consecutive years, I showed up on Thanksgiving with craft projects for everyone else. Here's what we (they) worked on in 2019:

Cute! Even cuter: In 2018, another family member provided Thanksgiving Hats for one and all: 

In 2016, I went everywhere: The Big Island, a wonderful Viking river cruise from Amsterdam to Hungary, then to St. Louis and right before Thanksgiving, I left on a National Geographic/Lindblad cruise that followed the Lewis and Clark expedition along the Snake and Columbia Rivers. 

On a stop at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington, I got to pose with a bas relief of one of my favorite people: innovative dancer Loie Fuller. (I once danced as her at a fundraising benefit for a regional theater. Yep, me.)  

Over a chilly Thanksgiving with family in 2015, I relaxed. A lot. The mountains were beautiful and the snow-laden trees were beautiful: 

That said, cold weather just doesn't suit me (are all older adults afraid of walking on ice?), so I snuggled into an easy chair with my Kindle.   

I'd forgotten that during Thanksgiving Week in 2014, I was busy with book signings, celebrating a great guide Eve Batey and I penned about cool stuff to do in San Francisco — some of which I still do, after almost 15 years after moving here.  

Our family had much to celebrate in 2012 (you know who you are), but photographic records from Thanksgiving Week of 2011 indicate I was out on the water, watching for whales, a passion I have indulged since 1982. (Another "yikes" is in order!) 

These sea lions seemed to enjoy rocking in the waves on the bright yellow buoy. 

Here's a photo from 2008 of some dear friends at a party at my spacious condo in St. Louis County, where I often invited 70 people over for festive occasions:

Sometimes I still miss all 1,700 square feet (and sometimes just that massive soaking tub), but I truly have everything I need in my 560-square-foot apartment here on the edge of the continent.  

Living in the past, of course, is not possible — the world only spins forward — so let's all gear up for a lovely Thanksgiving 2024!