What If Today…You Came For Thanksgiving?

“Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread.”~ Conrad Aiken

Anticipation was the real meal. Truth be told, she was getting stuffed.

Who would come? What would they bring? The building excitement was almost too much to bear.

Savory smells of turkey stuffed with bread cubes bathed in butter and broth and loaded with pecans, giblets, apples and herbs had started floating from the kitchen a few hours earlier. The shadows on the living room floor had shortened considerably since 4 am when the boiling and chopping of the heart and liver had begun. The vegetable-filled, braided bread cornucopia sat majestically as the  guest of honor amid a mishmash of fine china plates and water goblets whose patience was wearing thin.

Guests would soon be floating over the threshold of the front door as they followed  the scent of a house laden with the promises of a hearty and satisfying meal from the end of the cobblestone alleyway all the way into the front hall. Her mouth watered thinking of the sandwich piled with leftovers- the real meal that she’d eat in the quiet of the night as she relished the day’s memories, and walls permeated with the smells of the day sighed with every mouthful, coveting every tidbit swallowed by the gluttonous floor.

She hoped for mashed potatoes smooth enough to eat with her fingers, topped with the gravy she would make from the drippings in the roasting pan. Maybe someone would bring cranberry sauce, the whole berry kind. There was a can in the pantry just in case, but homemade was so much better. The meal was a surprise in the making.

Losing herself  in daydreams accompanied by Pachelbel’s Canon in D playing in her ear, she drifted in and out of sleep under the fleece blanket, startling at the sound of every branch that teased her through the bay window a few feet away.

The mincemeat pie was calling from the oven.

Or was that someone at the door?

 

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