Thanksgiving at the lake.

This was our first Thanksgiving in "The Lakehouse". We hosted my husband's family and my sister-in-law's in-laws, for a total of fifteen adults and three children. Thank goodness our open-floorplan home provided plenty of space for both sitting around the table together enjoying the incredible array of food everyone made and lounging in tryptophan splendor afterwards. I am still full today.

The planning started last Friday night when we invited my sister-in-law, Libby, her family and inlaws to dinner. I made shrimp and grits for the first time. I almost screwed up the grits. Who can mess up grits you ask? Well, when you switch the volume of grits to water, it's easy. Luckily for me, my husband, Larry, saved them with lots of milk and butter. They actually were great. But, the true accomplishment was the shrimp dish. I found a Bobby Flay recipe on-line along with a "Gullah" recipe. I just recently found out about the Gullah culture on the South Carolina coast. The first freed-slaves from West Africa put down roots in Beaufort, near Charleston. They founded their own culture, Gullah, and have their own language.

I combined the best of both these recipes and added my own touches: good Applewood-smoked bacon and Andoille sausage, onion, roasted red peppers, chopped tomato(peeled and seeded so Libby could eat it), lemon juice, butter, shrimp and scallops. It was just delicious and my southern-born relatives raved about it. Yes, bloggers, a Yankee can cook Southern.

Anyway, Libby, her sister-in-law, Mary Pat, her husband, Ed, and I sat around the table after dinner and planned our Thanksgiving menu. Larry and I had already picked up a frozen turkey and honey, spiral-cut ham, so we just added the fixin's and who would make them. Oh, yes, we planned desserts as well. The result yesterday, was a mountain of food that almost made us feel guilty for all the starving children in the world our parents threatened us with if we didn't clean our plates as children ourselves. I learned that this threat has no geographic boundaries. Parents were the same everywhere. Are we still doing this one? I'm certainly not. I gave myself permission to not clean my plate and throw food away years ago. It felt bad at first, but I found myself defending it yesterday when little Amanda wanted permission to throw leftover desserts away with her paper plate. "If you take it, you have to eat it", was what her mother told her. I intervened, and said Amanda could go right ahead and throw it away. I also encouraged her mother to let it go.

The sad part of our day was that Libby, who is terminally ill with appendix cancer that has taken over her digestive organs, got impacted again and doubled over in pain. When she gets like this, there is no pain medication at home that will relieve it, so she was admitted to the hospital two days before Thanksgiving. It was very difficult to go ahead with our holiday celebration without her, but we took turns visiting before and after the day. And, we recorded the day on a video camera that Larry and I took to the hospital last night, so she could hear the songs we sang to Joe's guitar after dinner, and all the good wishes we sent her all day long. She and I sang along to the songs in her hospital room and she was much better. We heard from her brother's wife that in the morning, she was very emotionally upset. The first words out of her mouth when she was admitted to the hospital were, "I don't want to ruin Thanksgving!" I assured her she wouldn't and she didn't.

Before dinner, when the food was ready, we all stood around the kitchen holding hands while I said "the Blessing". I became overwhelmed with emotion as I began, and Mary Pat put her arm around my should for support while I continued to thank God for all our blessings. I asked for help for Libby and thanked Him for the time he gave us with her. Her brother, Billy (Larry's brother too), was also diagnosed with kidney cancer the same day Libby was admitted to the hospital this week. But, he learned that they detected it early and he could consider that "Divine intervention" must have come into play. The timing of his pain attack from gallstones, the lack of patients in the hospital at that particular moment, the area of the ER in which he received his examination all combined to mean he got the additional xray and tests he needed to find his kidney tumor. If the doctors and nurses were busier, they wouldn't have done them at all he was told. So, he should be okay if there are no surprises when they operate on December 15th. Kidney cancer cannot be treated with chemotherapy or radiation, so surgery is his only option. I prayed for him too.

When I was done, several people had tears in their eyes, but we all laughed and hunkered down to the tables joined end-to-end to make room for everyone and their heaping full plates. It was a wonderful meal and a wonderful day. Plus, we were blessed with a gloriously sunny day with temperatures in the low 70's. That in itself was a huge blessing. Thank you, God.