Our hard work, the earth’s bounty

When I think of Thanksgiving, the first image that pops into my head is my grandparents’ farm – their retirement retreat – in Harrison County.

They had a big garden, and she canned tomatoes and green beans. She used to make this sauce from wild gooseberries that, poured warm over vanilla ice cream, made all that berry picking on warm June days worthwhile.

The only thing that came close would be the strawberries – out of the garden, cooked with a little sugar, then poured over ice cream. Oh my.

Picking strawberries is harder than picking gooseberries, despite the fact that gooseberries are back in the woods and have lots of little thorns.

Strawberries just break your back. You go down the row, flip back the leaves, pluck and move on.

And then Grandma comes along behind you, flips back leaves, finds all the luscious berries you missed and lets you know about each one. Suffice it to say I’m not much of a farmer.

They didn’t have to put in a big garden. Didn’t have to put in a garden at all. Didn’t have to can things – that’s always a few long, hot days too – and set them aside for a cold winter day. There was a Hy-Vee not far down the road.

But they raised three kids in the Depression, and putting in a garden was just something they did. Of course, Grandma and the garden brought forth delights – pickled beets, bread-and-butter pickles – that the grocery store could never hope to compete with. That made Thanksgiving dinner and about every other meal better.

She died in March. She was 97 and the last of my grandparents. I miss them all every day.

I think our modern detachment from the rhythms of planting and growing, then harvesting and setting by is part of what undermines the idea of Thanksgiving. We all have a Hy-Vee just down the road, and who thinks of the sun and rain and work that bring food to the grocery cart?

I don’t need the stories about Pilgrims and Native Americans. I certainly don’t need a second slice of pie. I do need the idea of Thanksgiving: Another year of hard work and harvest, whether it’s a year of plenty or a year of enough to get by. Thanksgiving is the beginning of the end of the sweetest, most subtle season, autumn. It is the time to think that perhaps when things are tough, as they are now, we should be more thankful for what we do have.

It is one day – one day – to rest and reflect. To know that we’ve got enough to get through the winter. No need to ponder the chores and the promise of spring, or the long, hot days of toil in the summer to come. Just a day to rest.

That’s the theory, anyway. But sometimes that vision has about as much relevance as the Pilgrims fresh off the boat at Plymouth Rock. The modern commercial version of Christmas shoved aside Thanksgiving years ago, Halloween is in some peril – small loss – and Labor Day had better watch out.

Thanksgiving is now the day to eat the bird and pie, then gather round the fireplace to plot strategies for getting the best bargains hours before the next day’s first rays of dawn. Put on your track shoes to get ready for the real holiday, Black Friday, and head to bed early as if it were Christmas Eve. We should change it from Thanksgiving to Doorbuster Eve.

Blame the heartless merchants if you wish, but that’s not really it. Humans aren’t that complicated, and businesses are less so. It’s stimulus and response. They cheat the season ahead a couple of days every year, and We the Consumer let them. If we’re out filling stockings before the harvest is in and thanks have been given, that’s our fault.