THANKSGIVING REFLECTIONS

We had been having Thanksgiving dinner with DeRay’s family down at Karen’s  in Murray as we had done for years.  Grandpa belonged to some union and he worked the lights at the Ice show at the Salt Palace.  He had asked DeRay to help him Thanksgiving night.  That left me to drive the children home.  Brent was 7 and Jeanne was 4.  DeRay had just built a new television from a kit and I was eager to get home and watch one of my favorite musicals.  It was snowing when we left Karen’s and it was scary every mile of the way home; the last mile being a dirt road, steep and slippery.   I wasn’t even sure I could find our turn-off.  Coming up Highway 89, a police fog horn bellowed:  “MOVE OVER.  MOVE OVER.”  “Don’t you know I’m a woman alone with two little kids and I can’t see the road and you want me to get off?” I cried to myself.  I thought they should guide me home but they just wanted me out of their way.  Probably going to an accident. We were living in the garage while DeRay built our house.  We had it partitioned off into two bedrooms and a living/kitchen room.  Quite cozy, really--if we hadn’t just moved from a big house on the hill in Bountiful.  We weren’t newly weds.  DeRay had completed four years of college; we had both worked for U.S. Steel, then he accepted a job at Hill Air Force Base and we had moved from Orem, to Layton, to Farmington, to West Layton and finally to our lovely home in Bountiful – and now had bought acreage in the Mutton Hollow District of Davis County near Kaysville.  After driving through the perilous blizzard that dark Thanksgiving night, I remember how wonderful it felt to be safe and warm in our little cottage watching a wonderful old musical on our new television set.

 

Not Thanksgiving but the time period is right. Bottom: Brett, Brent, Danny, Chad, Julie,. Middle: Cari, Lori, Jeanne, Chad. Top: Clare hold Kathi, Marilyn, Karen, Norm, Jeanette, DeRay.

Several years and two kids later, we were settled in our new home and the garage was once more a garage.  My mother just had brain surgery for the second time in two months, having been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor ten years before.  We wanted all of her children to spend Thanksgiving with her even though she couldn’t be in her own home.  We rented the church and all eight of her children and spouses and most of her grandchildren gathered. She didn’t get released from the hospital until late Thursday so Friday was Thanksgiving Day that year.  The evening before, when she had just gotten out of the hospital and was resting in bed, I was in the kitchen making dressing and several other essential items.  Looking out the window in the darkness, there was my brother, DeLoy and his wife, Grace, smiling and waving at me.  They had traveled the furthest, coming from California.  After all the trauma and sickness, what a warm and glorious feeling to see loved ones gather.

Thanksgiving 1973. Kaysville, Utah. Back: Jerry, Lynn, DeMoin, Charles Murphy, Charles Hart, DeRay, DeLoy. Middle: Lana Gale, Juanita, Lucy, Carol, Mama, Shirley, Jeanette, Grace. Front: Verla, Parl.

Back: Cindy, J. Lynn, Jayson, Calvin, Stan, Keenan. Row 2: Effie holding Melissa, Amy Jayne, Nellie holding Devin, Karla, Todd, Tim holding Tamber. Row 3: Connie, Jeanne, Grandma Esplin holding Eddy, Keri. Row 4: Boyd, Carl, Tena holding Brooke, Brent. Row 5: Lee, Bryan, Robert, David.  Bryant Sorensen was on a mission; Lynn Charles Hart may have been playing football.  Two grandchildren were born after this picture: Amy Lyn Hugh and Tara Esplin.

I liked another Thanksgiving just the year before.  With Brent, Jeanne, and almost 1-year-old Brooke, we traveled to Orderville to spend Thanksgiving with Mama.  Her kind and gentle husband whom we called Uncle Ed had died earlier in the year.  That was the second husband she had lost.  Mama had reared us kids ranging in age 1 year to 18 years after Daddy was killed.  When all but the two youngest were married and gone, she married again.  So on this bittersweet holiday, it was just the six of us.  Mama had had cobalt treatments plus surgery several times.  She was still Post Master and she prepared the dinner but she suffered acutely.  I was proud to be pregnant again, even so soon, because of all our struggles to get a family.  For those few hours on this Thanksgiving day, everything felt idyllic. 

Jeanne, Brooke, Jeanette, Brent, Amy Esplin