HEART BEAT: Remembering to be Thankful

By Felicia Mitchell

I know what I was doing eighteen years ago today, the day before Thanksgiving, only eighteen years ago, today was not the day before Thanksgiving.  It was the Monday after the holiday, and I was nine months pregnant.  Well, I was one day short of nine months pregnant. 

In the morning, I visited my doctor, who told me to go home and rest my feet.  I went home and made an apple pie instead, sweetening it with currants and cinnamon.  I hadn’t eaten sugar in months and months.  No coffee either.  The pie was good.  It’s all I wanted for lunch.

Perhaps I rested, but I also made chicken curry for supper, stewing chicken and making rice on the side.  You would think there would still have been some leftover Thanksgiving turkey.  No, the cats and I, along with my husband, had polished that off.

Shortly after supper, there was what I always metaphorically describe as a knock at the door.  My mellow fetus, which had never kicked (or yelled or screamed), knocked.  I smiled.  That had to be it.  It was.

Instead of rushing into the den to get my husband, I went into the kitchen and looked at the leftover chicken curry.  It’s always so much better the second day.  This time, instead of putting it in the refrigerator to eat the next day, I put it in the freezer.

Then I was ready to get in the car and go to Abingdon, where twelve hours and a few minutes later my son was born.  This year, I will herald his birthday the way my mother used to commemorate mine, by calling him up at the precise time of birth and wishing him a happy birthday.

Of course, he will just be upstairs, sound asleep, and I will be calling his cell phone, which will wake him up.  And then, after he goes back to sleep, and sleeps late the way you’re supposed to do on a holiday, I will get in my car and drive to Abingdon to see my own mother, the one who loved to call me to wish me a happy birthday when she could.

The last letter my mother, always sentimental, mailed was a note she wrote wishing my son a happy birthday and sending him a dollar bill.  That was three years ago, a few weeks before she moved up here to a nursing home.  It’s amazing that she remembered his birthday, even if she mixed up some letters and wrote Cup instead of Guy.

In addition to celebrating my son’s birthday, I celebrate my mother’s birthday every November. November is National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month, too, a time to honor people living with this disease, their caregivers, and all the people who make their lives special. 

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving, I am going to honor my son, who grew up in the shadow of his grandmother’s disease and who has shared me with her his whole life.  Today, I am going to cook.