Thanksgiving Day Has New Meaning This Year

Today is a major holiday for those of us living in the United States (and possibly other places as well; I don't mean to exclude anyone!). It's the holiday of Thanksgiving, where, among other things, we think back upon the past year and give thanks for what we have. We usually cook massive feasts of turkey, ham, dressing or stuffing (and YES, as my mother will continually remind you, there is a difference! Dressing is not cooked inside the turkey like STUFFING is.), mounds of mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and more pies than we can stand to look at. Most people don't have to go to work, kids don't have to go to school, and it's a major family occasion, sometimes one of the few times a year that whole extended families might see each other. This ritual may seem odd to those in other countries, but at its core, it's intended to show that we're prosperous enough to make such a meal for a single day.

But beyond the Hallmark version is the real truth behind Thanksgiving: that of giving THANKS for what we have (or in some cases, what we don't have!). There has never been a single year in which I was more grateful and thankful than I am this year. At this point last year, we weren't sure if I was going to be home for the holiday, or stuck in a hospital 3 hours away from those I love. Even, some months before this time last year, whether I was going to live or not.

Going back over your past year can sometimes be painful, and I think about the long journey I've walked over the past 365 days. I went from a person paralyzed from an autoimmune condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome over Christmas 2012, to a healthy and active young woman who went to work every day, played with dogs, and rode and trained my horse. Just 5 months later, that recovery had done a complete 180 and I was again ill, and finally, on July 27, 2013, I was diagnosed with leukemia. At the time, we were sure it was a death sentence.

Before being sick, I'd worked at Auto Zone, a local auto parts store, in Poplar Bluff, Missouri (yes, and I can change my own oil and brakes too!), and I'm grateful for the kindness and support of all my coworkers there. Thank you, my friends, for just being you! I wish I could return, but at this point...well, who knows what the next 365 days will bring? The Auto Zone corporation even gave me a donation, something they do for employees in situations like mine. Thank you, too, Auto Zone.

While I was sick, my family was making the long drive to visit me one weekend, and they were in a car accident. They're all okay, but the vehicle was a total loss. My husband arranged to purchase a vehicle from a coworker of his, and she was nice enough to let him make payments on it. But unknown to us, they were secretly collecting donations and raised enough money for him to pay off the car, get it inspected, and registered, and even had a little left over for gas. Thank you, everyone at Gates Refurb Plant in Poplar Bluff, for your generosity.

Also, my sister, Dana Jordan, who lives in Michigan, organized a fundraiser. My brother, Matt, and his girlfriend Maria, my other sister Becky Rottenbucher, my parents, Dan and Coy Jordan, and Maria's parents, all pitched in to help. Maria's parents allowed the use of Colonial Lanes in Flushing, Michigan, and they had a bowling fundraiser. They collected donations of services from local businesses, or items to raffle off, designed T-shirts, and much more. To each of them, as well as the sea of faceless (to me anyway) strangers who participated or donated, I say thank you very much. They raised a bit over $4,000 that night, and my family needed it desperately.

My sister-in-law, Jacinda Dees, who lives in Florida, also did some fundraising with silicon bracelets from the Max Foundation, and a go-fund-me (or something similar online) where people could go to donate. She also started a Facebook page so that I could post updates (or she or my husband could, when I wasn't able to) in a single place and reach all of the people that I really cared about, all from one place! She also (on occasion) had to edit my posts because I was on so many medications, some of them for pain, that I would often fall asleep posting, or I couldn't focus on what I was posting. Now that I look back, we should have saved some of those posts...we could probably devote an entire blog post to them alone! They would go perfect with all the "text message spell check fails" that are going around everywhere! So to her, and my in-laws Cathy and Darrell Dees, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I need to mention my friend Denise Mercer at this point. She's the one who sent me a simple friend request on Facebook, sort of a "I heard from so-and-so that you're sick, I wanted to check in" sort of thing. Denise is a published author as well, her book is called  My Father's Table, and you can click the link to see it on Amazon. You can also get it at CreateSpace and Barnes and Noble, and for Kindle. Many of you who regularly follow my blog may be aware that I had already published Once Upon a Western Way (in April, 2012), but it was only available digitally at Smashwords. Denise was the one that started "the butterfly effect" in my life, and gave me the tools and knowledge I needed to publish in print. Butterflies hold a special significance to Denise and her family, and that's why I chose the Monarch butterfly for the cover image for My Butterfly Cancer, and part of the reason I chose the butterfly logo to represent my publishing company. Denise, my dear and wonderful friend, thank you with big hugs!

I'm thankful for all the staff at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, who gave me the very best of care and made sure that I was alive to celebrate another Thanksgiving day. This includes doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors, janitors, and even the people who brought my food. I couldn't have gotten care closer to home, as we're extremely rural here, and they gave me 5 star service! I still keep in touch with some of them, and from time to time I stop there when I'm in town for checkups. And of course, I'm working to donate my books (and hopefully soon, my audiobooks) to the patients there. Thank you, all of you.

And finally, I'm ever grateful for the presence of my family. Being sick brought me and my mother closer together, and that makes me happy. My husband Jay, my kids Ally and Tasha, my best friends Val and Darlene, my (sister-from-another-mother) Michelle, Pam White (her husband had leukemia at the same time I did), all my aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, close friends, acquaintances, my pets at home, and anyone else I've forgotten to mention (and I'm sure there are some!): I am more thankful for you guys than ever before!

For my blog visitors (whom I am also thankful for), if you've made it this far in this long post, I'm going to ask you to do something. I'd like you to share something you're thankful for in the comments section. It doesn't have to be today, because I know some people will be very busy (as I likely will be), but take a moment to think about what you're really grateful for this year. And those of you in countries that don't exactly celebrate Thanksgiving (and I know Canada does, but it's not today) can do the same today. Leave a short comment about what you're thankful for this year, then share this post to your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, or any other social media you might wish to. If I can get enough comments, maybe I can write a follow up post as to what my fans are thankful for.

Holidays Are a Time to Reflect

With so many Americans (and possibly other nations) getting ready to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving, it's a time when we should slow down in our busy lives and really reflect on what we have and what we're thankful for. I've already written my #Thanksgivingblog, so I won't talk much about that today. But I am going to talk about food!

Holidays are a time when we tend to gorge ourselves on a feast of food that would probably sustain the family for a week were it not prepared on the same day! I grew up having the traditional meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing (not stuffing), gravy, and so on. So, this is what I prepare for my family each year.

I'm not too good at roasting a turkey in the oven, so I tend to choose a smaller turkey, or a turkey breast, and put it into my CrockPot with butter, cream of chicken soup, and water for the day. It slow cooks poultry to near perfection. It's never dry, always flaky and moist, and it saves my oven for other things to cook. My mother, if I remember right, used to start the turkey in the middle of the night, the day before Thanksgiving, or in the wee hours of the morning, so that she'd have the oven available later for dressing.

I make cornbread dressing, just as my mom always did. I cheat a little and use Jiffy cornbread mix, but I always add about a tablespoon of sugar to each batch. Then I chop up hard-boiled eggs, onions if I have them, and mix poultry seasoning, sage, garlic, salt, and pepper into the crumbled cornbread. Then I crack a couple raw eggs into it, fill it with water, and stick it into the oven.

For my gravy, I cheat a little bit too. I take cans of cream of chicken soup, add poultry seasoning, sage, salt, pepper, and chopped up hard-boiled eggs. I also use some of the juice and drippings from the turkey in the CrockPot and mix it all together. My husband says that my dressing and gravy should be considered the 5th food group. Although, with recent changes to the "food pyramid" that we grew up with, I'm not sure how many groups they actually have now!

Then, of course, we have the required mashed potatoes, usually a green bean casserole (with the crispy French onions), sweet potato casserole with marshmallows and brown sugar, yeast rolls, and cranberry sauce! We may have other odds and ins in depending on what we were feeling like having when we went shopping.

I've never been one to bake pies well, so we usually end up buying a premade pumpkin pie and usually a pecan pie too. Sometimes, I'll splurge and get a chocolate cream pie for myself, since I don't like pumpkin and can no longer chew pecan pie :( . Chocolate's my thing!

So, the family will gorge itself on all this food at around 2:00 in the afternoon, then we'll collapse into turkey comas for a few hours, only to wake again and return to the buffet to pick and choose at a favorite dish. And then comes the turkey sandwiches, turkey pot pie, or any dish you could substitute chicken with turkey for, just to try and get the leftovers eaten before it's time to throw them out!

Now that I've gotten you salivating at the thought of Thanksgiving dinner, I'll offer up a challenge: leave me a comment on a special dish you serve at Thanksgiving, or any other holiday, or one you remember from your childhood. Maybe we can find a new "special dish"!