I just set out the frozen turkey on the counter overnight to thaw. I've done this every Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. (But really my memory isn't all that great...). Setting out the turkey every year always reminds me of the Thanksgiving of 1977. We had just moved to Fort Worth, Texas. Mike had gone to Texas first that summer, looking for a job, then after he was employed and somewhat settled in (about 4 weeks) he came back to California and got the rest of us. That consisted of me (25), Jenny (4), Shane (2) and Mandee (a few month's old). We rented a flatbed trailer to hold the minimum of posessions we owned, then we all climbed into the cab of our brand new red pick up truck, and schlepped the three days to Texas. I had no idea where we would be living, or what Texas was like. All I knew was that our family was back together again and life was an adventure.
We arrived at our new home about 10:00 at night —in the pitch dark. Mike had rented us a small 2 bedroom house and I immediately went inside, laid out blankets on the floor in the second bedroom and settled the kids in for the night. Then Mike and I unloaded the trailer. It wasn't until the next morning that I was able to get a good look at where we would be living. It was in a poorer, neglected section of Forth Worth and it showed. The house was a ramshackle dump with a dirt yard and none-too-savory looking neighbors. But it was our first home in Texas and I was game.
Mike didn't make much money and worked most nights so I was home alone with my brood. It was cold that Autumn in Fort Worth. After the kids were in bed I'd sit on the couch wrapped in blankets and turn the TV up loud, trying to drown out the skittering sound of the mice running inside the walls. At least I HOPED they were mice. Pretty quickly after we moved in my next door neighbor showed up at my door asking if she could attach her garden hose to my outdoor water spigot. Her water had been shut off. “Sure” I said in wonder. No water? How does one live without water? She quickly attached it then drug that hose from my house to hers and strung it through her kitchen window. It stayed that way for weeks.
Her little tow-headed son was around 4 and quickly made the acquaintance of my kids. He'd come over every day and stay all day. His mother never came looking for him. I'd finally make him go home after dinner. He was filthy and constantly hungry. "Would you make me a peanut butter sambich?” he'd ask the minute he'd walk in the door, then again—several times a day. Of course I fed him. We didn't have much but it was evident he had nothing. I debated bathing him. Was that overstepping my bounds? Finally I figured his mother was too busy doing Lord Knows What and I started giving him baths. I taught him to pray with my own kids and told him about Jesus. He was usually glancing toward the kitchen during my lessons, no doubt wondering what was in there to eat. It was hard for me to do this with a glad heart. What kind of mother neglects her child like this? He was a nuisance. He cussed. He had no knowledge of manners. He smelled. But the little part in me that Jesus occupies would rise to the surface and I took him in. Now I realize that Jesus wanted to occupy all of me but I'm stubborn and hung onto my hateful bits in spite of His love for me. He took me in when I was stinking, foul mouthed and ill-mannered. He bathed me in His blood and gave me new life but it was still a struggle for me to really care about that little boy.
Come Thanksgiving I had saved a little extra money, went to the store and bought two turkeys. One for me and one for my neighbor — little peanut butter boy's mom. I knocked on her door a couple days before Thanksgiving, bird in arms, to deliver my present. “Oh” she said with a sad smile when I offered her the turkey, “I don't have any electricity or gas. I have no way to cook it but thanks anyway”. Then she shut the door.
I walked back home stunned and wondered what kind of life she was living. I'd never known anyone like that before. The boy had said his father was in prison. She was living in a cold house with no water, gas or electricity. So I took her turkey back home and cooked it in my postage stamp sized stove. That night I set out my own turkey to thaw on the counter. In the morning, Thanksgiving Day, I saw a nibbled hole in my raw turkey that had been sitting out to thaw. A mouse (Lord I HOPE it was a mouse) had eaten a quarter size hole in that raw bird. Nevertheless, I put it in the oven to cook and decided to ignore the mouse's thankgiving feast marks. Turkeys are not cheap. I bundled up the other turkey in tin foil and headed out the door into the cold to take it to my neighbor. One step out my door onto my front porch and I noticed a commotion next door. A large white van was there with “official” looking people in dark coats milling around it. They were putting the little boy in the van. I walked over and asked “What's going on?” The mom had been arrested for drugs and taken to jail, they said. Little peanut butter boy was headed to foster care. He didn't look scared or upset. I imagine he wasn't surprised at any turn of events in his short life. He just smiled and waved goodbye as the van drove away.We didn't stay in that house for too much longer after that. We've moved a lot since and never again lived in a house with mice in the walls (SURELY they were cute little mice) or unwashed, hungry, foul-mouthed boys next door. But every year I get out the Thanksgiving turkey and set it out on the counter to thaw no matter where we're living. And every year I am brought back to that Thanksgiving in Fort Worth and remember that mom and little peanut butter boy. I have so much to be thankful for. My three kids are grown and I have grandkids now. None of them are ever hungry or wanting for water or a warm home. They are blessed, as am I. They don't realize it. They have no measuring stick to go by except what their sheltered and comfortable lives have offered them. No knowledge of how frail life is and how ignorant it is to take happiness for granted. They have no peanut butter boy in their lives to remind them of how insecure life can easily and quickly be —but for the grace of God.
Oh the grace of God. That grace has followed me my whole life and I am thankful from the bottom of my heart. My measuring stick is a little broader than my grandchildren's is. Thankful can't begin to describe my feelings of gratitude toward a loving Father this year and every year. I am blessed beyond measure. I hope little peanut butter boy came to know that grace as well and is sitting in his own home with his own family, thawing the turkey on the counter and giving thanks. The odds are against it. But I hope and pray the odds are wrong.
