Vintage Thanksgiving

Thanks to my Cousin Maggie for posting these
Vintage Thanksgiving Cards
and thinking of me!

What Uncle Don Wrote:
As time passes all things change. One of the very noticeable changes from my perspective is the celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. As a young man in high school, college and a few years beyond, Thanksgiving was a HUGE holiday for the “Jack” and Adeline Carriker family. It was almost obligatory to gather at their house in Caney on that particular holiday. Even Christmas took a back seat to Thanksgiving. Time passed, grandchildren grew older, my parents grew older and passed on. Those Thanksgivings became a memory.

As did the other children and grandchildren of “Jack and Adeline,” my wife and I, with OUR kids began our own Thanksgiving celebrations. Anne cooked turkey (usually) for us and other family members or guests. That went on for quite a few years and then it, too, faded into the past. All to be “missed,” but with a sort of bittersweet joy, not sadness.

When I started my morning readings and meditation today, this article was the first thing in my mailbox. I think it is profound enough to share with you. I don’t know who will be where doing what this Thanksgiving. But whatever and wherever, let’s do it in a spirit of being “connected” by family ties. Sometimes those “ties” have to reach across states and continents, but they still bind those together who wish to be bound.

Yep, I’m getting older. But from time to time, age brings flashes of wisdom.
Friend / Grandpa/ Uncle Don Carriker

Thanks Uncle Don!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This photo is actually from Christmas 1953 in Caney, Kansas; but it could just as well be Thanksgiving, for it perfectly captures the way we all remember the annual November celebrations described above by Uncle Don. As my Cousin Marla wrote: Thanksgiving in Caney was the best!

Here we have Grandpa Willard S. "Jack" Carriker getting ready to carve the turkey, surrounded by, from left to right: Aunt Theresa, Uncle Robert, Wanda, June, Uncle Gene, Aunt Elaine, Grandma Adeline Carriker and Carolyn, just like a painting by Norman Rockwell:

And currently gathered in West Lafayette, Indiana, a small (but mighty!) Carriker - McCartney contingent left to right, Sam, Kitti, Ben, Uncle Rich, and Gerry (with Sam and Ben arriving from the East Coast and Gerry's brother Richard flying in from another Continent):

Thanks to my son Ben for this photograph of
"Family Brunching!"

And to my friend Beata for these Thanksgiving thoughts
to conclude the weekend:"The Thanksgiving table is like a small fragment of harvest, sample of history, segment of feeling, unit of family, and illustration of country. Can't escape it or hide, but looking from afar there's the greatest feeling of all -- to be invited to the table to celebrate!"

Covered Bridge

Christmas Card
from Uncle Wayne Mesneak

Last year I told my cousin Maggie that I wanted to find this card, written by her father -- my Uncle Wayne -- many years ago. I wanted her to see it, and I knew I had saved it, because I was so touched by his efforts to carry on the holiday traditions even without my Aunt Frances, who had died earlier in the year. Over the weekend, when putting away Christmas decorations, I started looking through the cards I had saved from the 1990s, and there it was. Despite the sadness it conveys, it also did our hearts good to reminisce.

Maggie wrote: "Oh Kitti, this made me cry. Daddy had such a hard year without her. We went to a restaurant for dinner that year because he didn't want to celebrate. So happy they are together now. Thank you for posting and saving this. I love you! Kitti cuz, you probably know this, but my mother just loved covered bridges; it is so sweet that Daddy used a card with a covered bridge on it. And it is wonderful to see his writing. It is funny how we can instantly identify the handwriting of our loved ones. I think he did a great job for a grade school education."

My cousin Maggie with her Dear Parents.
This is exactly how I remember
Aunt Frances and Uncle Wayne!

P.S.
Thanks to my friend Barbara Tilley, who commented:
"You are an extraordinary archivist.
This is a beautiful card, and I love covered bridges."
A few people asked who drew the picture of the covered bridge, and I would like to be able to acknowledge the artist, but as with so much of the really beautiful 19th - 21st C British & American Christmas Card art, this one is unattributed! It merely says, "A Sunshine Card / Made in U.S.A." I will never understand that practice! This is someone's handi-work! Please tell us who left behind the legacy of these lovely brush strokes! I always feel the same when looking through some of the lovely historical Christmas books that my sister - in - law Tina and I have given each other over the years. So many of the classic scenes -- children, fashion, home decor, holly greens, sledding and snow, quaint villages -- simply say "Anon." It's disappointing not to know the artists' names, but how lucky for us to be able to enjoy their talent decades -- even centuries -- later.

First Day of a New Year

Thanks to Maggie Mesneak Wick
for posting this sweet card,
to Peter Bunder for the excerpt from Sanders,
and to Gerry McCartney for typing it up!
"I write these last few paragraphs on the first day of a new year. Thin snow covers our patch of Indiana and the day has dawned clear. With early sunlight streaming through the windows, Ruth and I take down the Christmas decorations, wrap the homemade ornaments in tissue paper, loop the colored lights into bundles, and store everything away in the attic. I carry the tree out the back door and across the yard, leaving a trail of needles the whole way . . .

" 'Memory grips the past' as my friend wrote to me, 'and hope grips the future.' I think of the scarlet seeds quietly burning against the cold, black dirt, waiting for spring. I think of my children, and of the children they may have one day, and of those children's children, on and on, like the ridge upon ridge of mountains stretching out before me as far as I can see.

"I think of my students hard at work, learning what our clever species has already discovered, and adding their own new knowledge to the store. I imagine the host of ancestors, humans and non-humans, whose lives and labors have made this moment possible for those of us who breathe. I draw a breath, savor it, and bless them all" (190).

from Hunting for Hope
by Scott Russell Sanders

Broken and Beautiful

"Whenever I see abandoned houses I wonder about the family that used to live there. The excitement when the house was first built, the children who ran through those rooms, the meals that were served and shared. The happiness and even the pain. Oh, if walls could talk!"
~ Maggie Mesneak Wick ~
When my cousin Maggie sent me this photograph and I read her caption, I couldn't help thinking of "The House With Nobody In It" by Joyce Kilmer.

The House with Nobody In It

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

by American poet Joyce Kilmer(1886-1918)
best known for the occasionally parodied poem, "Trees"

This poem and more on my new post:
"Broken and Beautiful"
on the
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A fortnightly [every 14th & 28th]
literary blog of connection & coincidence; custom & ceremony

Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Or Not

Sam, Rabbit - Sitting ~ Spring Break 2004
. . . Easter is not really
for the children
unless accompanied by a
cream filled egg.
It has whips, blood, nails,
a spear and allegations
of body snatching.
It involves politics, god
and the sins of the world.
It is not good for people
of a nervous disposition.
They would do better to
think on rabbits, chickens
and the first snowdrop
of spring. . . .

from the poem "Christmas is Really for the Children"
by Steve Turner (b. 1949)
British music journalist, biographer, and poet
[to read entire poem, see my post "Keep Christmas With You"]
Robin Eggs
from the photographs
of Maggie Mesneak Wick
Photos elsewhere on this blog
by my cousin Maggie:
Empty Nest
The Still Small Voice of Heaven

The Still Small Voice of Heaven

Early November Crescent Moon, Just Before Dawn
Photographed by my contemplative cousin,
Maggie Mesneak Wick
SONG ABOUT THE CRESCENT MOON:
Crescent Noon
[or is it Moon? You decide!]*
(Click title for music video)

Green September
Burned to October brown
Bare November
Led to December's frozen ground
The seasons stumbled round
Our drifting lives are bound
To a falling crescent noon

Feather clouds cry
A vale of tears to earth
Morning breaks and
No one sees the quiet mountain birth
Dressed in a brand new day
The sun is on its way
To a falling crescent noon

Somewhere in
A fairytale forest lies one
Answer that is waiting to be heard

You and I were
Born like the breaking day
All our seasons
All our green Septembers
Burn away
Slowly we'll fade into
A sea of midnight blue
And a falling crescent noon

Song by John Bettis and Richard Carpenter
Sung by Karen Carptenter (1950 - 1983)
American singer and drummer

*Though I could swear that Karen is always singing "Noon," in their printed matter, the Carpenters themselves refer to this song sometimes as "Noon" sometimes as "Moon." If anyone knows why the duplicity, please tell!

POEM ABOUT THE CRESCENT MOON:
Behind Me—dips Eternity

Behind Me—dips Eternity—
Before Me—Immortality—
Myself—the Term between—
Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,
Dissolving into Dawn away,
Before the West begin—

'Tis Kingdoms—afterward—they say—
In perfect—pauseless Monarchy—
Whose Prince—is Son of None—
Himself—His Dateless Dynasty—
Himself—Himself diversify—
In Duplicate divine—

'Tis Miracle before Me—then—
'Tis Miracle behind—between—
A Crescent in the Sea—
With Midnight to the North of Her—
And Midnight to the South of Her—
And Maelstrom—in the Sky—

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 86)
Reclusive American Poet

Empty Nest

I have been watching the baby birds in this nest for weeks. Yesterday I went out to look and one flew up close to my face and landed across the yard. Another one flew out. I freaked, and called my husband Gary to catch them. They were half flying and half hopping. Five adult robins were chirping and dive bombing us. I looked with a flashlight after dark. I was so worried because there was one left. He was gone this morning. I took one last pic of him on the ground.

The mother robin was sitting on the edge of the nest this morning . . . all mothers know the feeling: EMPTY NEST SYNDROME! :(

Guest Blogger:
Photography & commentary by Maggie Mesneak Wick,
my beautiful, perceptive, sensitive, spiritual, talented cousin.

Thanks Maggie!