By Georgia Osten
We celebrated Thanksgiving this year with family – True! The fact we celebrated a week before Thanksgiving was not an issue, we were all together and I loved every minute of it! I remember when we were a young family and both our parents were still alive, we would have to make choices where we would spend the holidays. Sometimes it meant dropping in on both families in the same day (UGH!). If my Mom and Granny lived in another state, off we would go, this one particular time to Mobile. I remember it was the first time my husband would be confronted by my family. Oh what a trip it was …

I’ll never forget Mom asking my husband to carve the turkey. This was out of some Chevy Chase Christmas Vacation movie – he proceeds to begin chopping away and lo and behold, there’s the bag of giblets. Mom had forgotten to take them out of the “butt,” I mean cavity of the bird! Being the kind, compassionate person he is, he didn’t say anything, just removed the bag and, I guess, threw it away.

These days, we look forward to the giblets. We boil them and chop them up for our gravy. Oh, by the way, we have to have two gravies, one with and one without. The kids can’t stand all those chunks in their gravy.

Of course, the next year, we would go to the other parent’s house or we would have Thanksgiving at ours. Now, that was a treat!

I remember serving all the dishes on the pool table which occupied our  dining room. It’s okay, we’ve pretty much been, all our lives, on the unstructured list, a little bit “hippy” if we must use the term some 50 or 60 years later.

I’ve diverted from my story a tidge, so here we go. My husband and I had no plans for Thanksgiving this year. Not true, we were going to go to Galveston to stay at our favorite “home away from home,” but some one of us was a bit under the weather,” so we postponed that trip.

I called our friends to ask if they would like to join us to decorate for the Christmas Festival up at the Park after they had their Thanksgiving celebration on Thursday. Lo and behold, we got an invitation to join them for Thanksgiving Lunch.

Are you kidding? We practically turned inside out with joy. Now, that’s the true spirit of Thanksgiving. I mean, really, “what can I bring?” I asked. We had been living off leftovers since Saturday, we even had pies leftover…

All this being said, I don’t care, I was so happy to NOT have to eat our leftovers again, but more than anything, I was moved beyond belief to be invited by these sweet, adorable friends to dine with them in the comfort of their home.

This, to me, is the true meaning of the season.

My Cup Runneth Over

GO’s Sand Bucket is only one beach bum’s journal of life at the beach, probably something each of you can relate to. Please feel free to email me with your thoughts, visions and/or feelings of just exactly what the beach means to you. Email: [email protected]

[12-2-2019]