Thanksgiving is mine

In my younger days, it was my family’s tradition to celebrate Thanksgiving. Not everybody likes turkey, but our love for it had begun even before we lived for a while in the United States, where Thanksgiving is celebrated with almost as much enthusiasm as Christmas, minus the gift giving.

In fact, I remember roasted turkey as a favorite festive dish at my paternal grandparents’ home, and not only at Thanksgiving. It had Spanish stuffing—with chorizo and chestnuts—and there was always an apple pie to go with it. In our taste in food, movies, music and politics, we were almost as Filipino-American as Filipino-Spanish.

The American influence was rooted in my grandfather’s American education, which most of his sons also got, from the Jesuit-run University of Notre Dame, after a Jesuit high-school education at the Ateneo de Manila.

American passions

Those years exposed them to such American passions as free speech and press as well as Frank Sinatra and Thanksgiving. And, away from home during the Thanksgiving school break, surely they must have been invited to friends’ homes for celebration. For their own turkey, the Americans had bread stuffing, and pumpkin pie on the side, which is an acquired taste.

I picked up the tradition myself during my young family’s five-year stay in Houston, Texas. I was energetic enough in my 20s, but still had a yaya to assist me, especially with my four children. With her help I became a high-functioning American mother and housewife. I learned to drive my children to school, and cooked and baked. My yaya spared me from the hard labor of ironing, vacuuming, putting the kitchen in order and cleaning the bathrooms. I did my own fruitcakes and roasted my own turkey—at Christmastime, as well. We embraced the strange American tradition of Halloween. I even wept when John Kennedy was assassinated.

Our US stay brought out whatever hidden ability I had. I sewed my daughter’s school uniform, as did all the other mothers. I bought a portable sewing machine, which proved especially useful when I got pregnant with my fourth and youngest, a son to be born there. I sewed my own maternity clothes and uniform mother-and-daughter dresses. I saved that way.

But, before anybody gives me more credit than I deserve, the school provided us with the patterns with instructions and some already precut material, which needed only to be sewn together. Life was somehow made easier for US housewives. If I seemed to take to the American life almost naturally, it was only because I had help.

Back in the Philippines, my immediate family continued to celebrate Thanksgiving. More than a habitual carryover of an American commemoration of the first joint feast between the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag tribe after the Autumn harvest, Thanksgiving was my own personal celebratory expression of gratitude for all things given to me and my family. Christmas was Mom’s, Thanksgiving was mine.

Letting go

As I grew older, however, I started letting go of such traditions in my life. The pandemic only hastened it—life as I knew it changed, and so did I in body, mind and spirit. In old age, my own priorities and attitude towards life are no longer what they were. I pray more now, but mostly in gratitude and for others. I’ve realized I’ve been given everything already—indeed, “my cup runneth over.”

The downside of living this long is we will see the end of many things we wished would not end. America is no longer what it was when I lived there. My own country is even more pathetic compared with itself once upon a time. Things could be better, of course. Still, I only have to look back to feel so blessed. Thanksgiving needs no special day anymore—we have our turkey when it happens to be on the menu, however rare that may be.

God has, indeed, been quite generous and kind to us old people, and not through any personal merit of ours. It’s just His nature. Why else would every husband I know who is losing it have a devoted wife to look after him—although it is the wife in this situation I tend to worry about, and I pray for both? I know in my heart that if the situation had been reversed, these husbands would have done the same for their wives.

In my case, it is Vergel taking care of me, and, if in a lesser way, I take care of him, too. We are all blessed in such different ways that, if each of us were to put our troubles on a table to see if we would exchange them with anyone else, I’m sure we’d each grab our own back. No one would like to change places with anyone else. And that’s just how it should be.

It’s absolutely humbling to realize how much one has been loved and cared for all these years by our Creator. How so many things could have gone wrong, but through His love and mercy, despite ourselves, they didn’t.

We are all blessed in such different ways that, if each of us were to put our troubles on a table to see if we would exchange them with anyone else, I’m sure we’d each grab our own back