Thanksgiving Memories

"Over the river and through the woods

  to Grandmother's house we go.

  The horse knows the way

  to carry the sleigh

  through the white and drifted snow... oh!"

My dad actually sang that song as we rode -- in a car -- over a couple of rivers, and through some woods -- and by a bunch of manufacturing plants -- to my grandmother's house for Thanksgiving when I was a little kid.

And that created the first of many fond memories of Thanksgiving. For us, Thanksgiving was the one day of the year when my entire extended family (all 13 of us) were together -- my parents, my sister and me, my aunt and uncle and 4 cousins, both grandmothers and our one remaining grandfather. We kids were all pretty close in age, so we had a lot of fun, playing games, putting on skits and 'haunted houses' for the adults. And of course, eating!

Like all families who can remember an ethnic heritage other than American/English, we had not only the turkey and trimmings, but also ethnic foods. Today, I'd kill for my grandmother's noodle kugel and potato kugel (she took those recipes to her grave, and no one else's comes close). My aunt, born in Sweden, didn't make cranberry sauce, she made lingonberry sauce instead. (Tasted the same to me -- great!). When we got older, there was champagne. One year, there was even a jeroboam of champagne.

So Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I mean, really, what's not to like? You get to appreciate everything, to share that with people you care about -- and then there's all that food! For my family, turkey, stuffing, gravy and lingonberry sauce only appeared once a year.

With every bit of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce today, I am linked to those happy memories.  Even when I cook, I think of my mother and aunt and grandmothers cooking for us all those years ago, and so even the cooking is a kind of ritual. It's a ritual that takes a few days -- and is well worth the time.

I'll be cooking next Wednesday, not writing or doing my radio show. Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

With Much Love and Gratitude

I'm really grateful for everything in my life -- the good, the mundane, and even the so-called bad, because I get to learn and grow from it -- and I reflect on that daily. A partial list of what I'm thankful for includes:

• you, for reading and supporting me, today and throughout the years
• my friends and family (even if they're not reading this!)
• my guides, without whom much of my life would not be possible
• nature, without whom none of our lives would be possible
• technology -- where would we be without electricity, radio, TV, the internet, automobiles, transit, etc.?

As I said, I think about this every day, and Thanksgiving is a good opportunity to speak about with  you.

Gratitude is important for two reasons. The first is the simple, "What you focus on, expands". If you appreciate things, you get more of what you appreciate. The second is that it is actually good for your health! According to research at the Institute of HeartMath,

"...true feelings of gratitude, appreciation and other positive emotions can synchronize brain and heart rhythms, creating a bodywide shift to a scientifically measurable state called coherence. In this optimal state, the body’s systems function more efficiently, generating a greater balance of emotions and increased mental clarity and brain function.

"Sustained feelings of gratitude have real benefits, including the following:

• Biochemical changes – Favorable changes in the body’s biochemistry include improved hormonal balance and an increase in production of DHEA, the "anti-aging hormone."
• Increased positivity – Daily gratitude exercises can bring about a greater level of positive feelings, according to researchers from the University of Miami and the University of California, Davis who studied this process in 157 individuals over 13 days.
• Boost to the immune system – The IgA antibody, which serves as the first line of defense against pathogens, increases in the body.
• Emotional "compound interest" – The accumulated effect of sustained appreciation and gratitude is that these feelings, and coherence, are easier to recreate with continued practice. This is because experiencing an emotion reinforces the neural pathways of that particular emotion as it excites the brain, heart and nervous system. The downside is that you also can reinforce negative emotions."

Actually, I suspect that the coherence is what helps generate what you choose to create, so the first statement could more accurately be, what you focus on coherently, expands.

Keeping the holidays under control

Okay, it's a little lat for this, at least for this year, but I was part of a recorded group conversation that my friend and radio host, Nina Price, did on how to enjoy the holidays. You can read the summary here:

http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/note.php?note_id=52293441788&ref=nf

How to have stress-free holidays

I had a festive, elegant, sit-down, 5 course dinner for 18. Oh, plus 2 dogs, one of whom showed up out of the blue. Luckily my cats were quite gracious.

My dining room table seats 6. Period. Therefore, this involved

- putting the living room furniture (or most of it) in the dining area
- putting the dining room table, the kitchen table and a patio table in the living room
- taking the kitchen door off its hinges to move the kitchen table into the living room, and of course replacing it
- getting some plates, glasses & sliver from my mother, who lives 45 minutes away — because who has service for 18?
- setting up 3 buffets, along with the 3 eating tables
- sewing chair covers onto the patio chairs that I have to use to seat that many
- putting up seasonal decorations
- and of course, the cooking, all in a 2 butt kitchen (the functional part is a galley, about 12 feet long) and the cleaning

And not only did everyone have a great time, but that also included me!

Here’s what I know that makes this possible:

* Plan ahead

• I get the stuff from Mom a couple of weeks early, when I happen to be near her house,
• shopping is Saturday before Thanksgiving
• usually, I start moving furniture and cooking Sunday before Thanksgiving (this year on Monday, though I screwed up the guest count and had to do it all over again on Wednesday, after the tables were set)
• do a little cooking and/or moving every day, with the bulk on Wednesday afternoon

* Stay organized

• I work to a written plan, and can therefore delegate
• I have a box that has all the linens
• I have those Teflon furniture moving pads, and I know where they are, too

* Get help!

• the kitchen door was courtesy of my brother-in-law, who is in construction
• while I do the bulk of the cooking, a sister-in-law helps on Wednesday, each woman brings a dish we agree upon in advance, and Kosta monitors the turkey

* Keep notes

I keep notes each year on what worked and what didn’t, and because I know where those notes are, along with all the recipes, which are kept with the notes, the event gets better each year.

THIS is the reason for ritual — you repeat what works, and discard what doesn’t. Plus when at least some of the guests know what to expect (like gong around the table, saying what we are thankful for before the meal), everyone will relax.

Remember, no one notices, or cares, that anything is perfect — or even that the house is clean. They care that the food is decent, and the company fun. No one will ever look at your floor.

Why ritual?

When I was a kid, ritual was something boring that happened in a church or synagogue, that had nothing to do with me -- and no point that I could see.

When I was first an active real estate broker, I had the good fortune to have a buyer client who needed to get out of a purchase contract on a perfectly good condominium (and I do mean perfect -- the contractor's inspection, for once, found exactly nothing wrong). I thought to call a feng shui expert (this was before almost anyone had heard of feng shui), and the expert got her out of the contract because the location of the condo was bad, and incurable.

A while later, when she bought a townhouse nearby, he inspected again, and then did a house blessing ritual immediately upon closing. That was eye opening! We stood in the tiny garden, and said different prayers over a vase she'd bought to put in the entry hall. I psychically saw different colors stream into the vase with the different prayers! When I checked with the expert later, the colors did, in fact, match the colors associated with the 'deities' for each prayer! So that's what ritual objects were meant to be -- objects that carried spiritual energy! And the point of that ritual was to bring those energies into the house.

This year's Thanksgiving, an elegant, sit down dinner for 18, taught me even more about ritual: what it is, and why it is. Every year, after Thanksgiving, I write notes about what worked and what didn't, along with ideas about how to make things go more smoothly. I take photos of the set up, too -- table placement for however many there are that year, place setting, etc. I keep all the once-a-year recipes with those notes, too. So each year, Thanksgiving gets easier for me, and more fun for my family and friends. I've learned that we should go around the tables, each saying what we're thankful for before we pass out the soup. I've learned that kids make great soup plate runners, serving diners while I ladle soup in the kitchen, that turkey cooks surprisingly fast at 500 degrees, and that a bus bucket in the kitchen keeps clean up much more organized.

OMG, that's a ritual! Rituals are just ways of doing things that work, so you do them the same way, over and over. Not only are they effective, but they also help people know what to expect, which makes everyone comfortable. I think the problem with the church/synagogue rituals to which I was exposed as a kid was that they had in some way outlived their usefulness -- or that the true spirituality behind the form had been lost over time.