Thanksgiving of 2005 was bright and crisp, extra sort of sunny. It had been a late fall, much like this one, and the dark and vibrant leaves were showing off, clinging to the oaks and maples, not ready to yield their right of way to rakes and blowers.

My parents’ farm was in the late season and as I passed their lower garden, Miss Janie parked beside the road, gathering a mess of greens for her family, threw up her hand without looking. It’s like that in the country, you wave a greeting to most everybody.

Mom was in full turkey tilt. The little brick house smelled of all-purpose flour, sage, nutmeg, and love. My daughters scrambled from our SUV, hair flying behind them to bang open the storm door and fetch their tight, squeeze hugs. Elbowing for best position in her lap, Grandma was their favorite. Thanksgiving cactus lined the windowsill, angular blooms bragging about their bounty, thick and heavy.

The Macy’s Day parade was on TV. Snoopy, suspended above the buildings, drifted down Fifth Avenue, accompanied by the Kansas City High School marching band.

Mom had taken a pinecone and fashioned a turkey with construction paper. She had cut extra feathers for each of us to write down what we were grateful for. The tail feather already stood at the back center of the cone, in my mom’s wriggly cursive was written, family.

Riley wrote that she was thankful for Nickelodeon and Ryann, ever the materialist, wrote Christmas. Because I’m a smartie britches, I wrote that I was thankful for world peas. My brothers and their families arrived, filling in the pinecone with assorted comments. Riley went back after our abundant feast and wrote on the last orange feather that she was thankful for Grandma’s stuffing bars. This bugged me as southerners eat dressing, not stuffing, but Grandma didn’t mind and tin foiled special leftovers just for her.

We walked to the back of the pasture that afternoon, the grass going dormant and cows lolling in the warmth of the day. I taught my girls to chew on blades of hay, and they ran in the open space, strands bobbing from their lips like thin cigars. There were days that I worried that I was raising city kids, and this stands out as one of them.

The moment of that afternoon paused for me. I looked across my parents’ acreage back to the house where I came home after my birth and lived until I moved away for college. The familiar angle of the sun on that landscape and my satiated belly delivering a comfort of home that can’t be duplicated.

In less than a year, both my parents would pass. At thirty-nine, I flashed forward to a new kind of holiday where I helmed the feast and attempted unsuccessfully to gather the scattered fragments of my family of origin. There was no glue that could hold us together.

The calendar advanced and holidays took a shape and mind of their own. Relationships were forged and broken, as is the rhythm of life.

Thanksgiving feels most different of all the holidays. The crowd is small, and I make dressing in the crock pot. Even with extra sage, it’s not as good as Grandma’s. My cactus is the same though, showy and proud as it delivers on its promise.

If I could go back and add a feather to that pinecone, a reverent nod to the past that I miss, it would read, remember.