Indigenous Thanksgiving?

Today we're grateful we came across a story about the plans being developed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock, two years from now in 2020. Here's a link to the story from the Associated Press: 400 years after Pilgrims came ashore in Massachusetts, natives gain a voice in Plymouth. We hope for a future in which Thanksgiving will no longer be a day of mourning for anyone, a day on which colonizers will be naturalized even if we can't become indigenous.

everything in the center piece basket is chocolate

Photo by J. Harrington

We're grateful we grew up in a place that knows enough to keep trying in hopes someday they'll get it right. We're grateful for what remains of the family we left behind, especially a creative and thoughtful sister who sends delightful centerpieces for Thanksgiving and special cookies many times each year. We're also grateful that we long ago found a Better Half with whom we've made a second home and raised a family half a continent from where we were born and raised. We're looking forward to enjoying Thanksgiving at the new house the Daughter Person (who bakes one of our favorite kinds of cookies for us) and Son-In-Law bought recently, and to eventually hearing the stories that come from making a house into a home. We hope they have learned and will remember that a dining table may be for holiday company, but a kitchen table is where family and friends gather.

Poking about the internet this morning, we discovered that one of our favorite poets, Joy Harjo, has an online reading of her Thanksgiving poem. We hope you enjoy it and have a wonderful and thankful holiday.

Poet Joy Harjo Reads a Thanksgiving Poem

Perhaps the World Ends Here

By Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

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