There are some images that stay with you for a lifetime. A passing thought of my grandmother brings me instantly to her front yard. She’s standing on her stoop smiling wide, her left hand holds the screen door open while she rings a cow bell in her right.
Lunch is served.
Her joy in calling the family to the table is legendary. Lunch, the largest meal in her Italian household, was a celebration, and our weekend visits brought out her best culinary skills. As a parent I can appreciate how she must have felt, ringing that bell for us just as she had for her son, my father, so many years before.
The bell, crude and rusted, dressed up with silver paint, once swayed from the neck of a Jersey cow that chewed grass all day in the nearby field. The urban landscape changed fast and before my father was in school the bell had become a child-summoning device.
My grandmother was always calling the family together in one-way or another. Her commanding presence and expertise in just about everything to do with the home made her an invaluable resource and a constant comfort. I learned a lot from my grandmother. She was my living sense of history.
Many children today don’t have the luxury of spending long periods of time with their grandparents. Families are spread across the country and the pace of life has literally squeezed away the tight family networks many of us once knew. That is a shame, because in the process we lose connection to a generation of insight, talent and love.
Today a renewed interest in honoring the past is growing. Farm fresh food is in demand and families are trying to get back to basics. In the spirit of Thanksgiving be sure to see this months article “Feeding Your Neighbors.” In this time of economic stress there are more and more families right here in our community that need food. And you can’t get more basic than that. We’ve included information that can make it simple for you to give. I can only imagine the joy my grandmother, who once ran a boarding house, would have felt in providing sustenance for her neighbors.
Every generation can carry on traditions or make new ones.
In our home Thanksgiving isn’t the same without the homemade cranberry sauce served in a golden, glass turkey-shaped terrine and an early morning reading of The First Thanksgiving by Jean Craighead George, the late, great Westchester resident and author.
The family cow bell has been replaced with a small silver bell. But it too calls our family to the table together. A reminder that time moves on, but the best of the past can move with it.
Happy Thanksgiving!
– Jean Sheff
Editor
