Sibling Assignment #129: Thanksgiving at Martin Creek

Silver Valley Girl gave the third sibling assignment this month around the theme of April. "In the movie “Pieces of April”, the plot centers around the main character April fixing her estranged family Thanksgiving dinner. Pick a holiday meal our family has shared in the past, and write about it."

InlandEmpireGirl wrote about the celebration of our mom being done with cancer treatments, here.

Thanksgiving 2008.

It was perfect.

It combined all that I most enjoy in my life, even if it all was squeezed into the shortest of time frames.

On Wednesday afternoon, I flew into Spokane and Silver Valley Girl's family picked me up and we drove to Martin Creek. We were about to celebrate Thanksgiving at InlandEmpireGirl's house.

I love going to Martin's Creek and being at InlandEmpireGirl's home.

Her house is warm, inviting, even cozy and there's something about the air, its smells, its dryness, in northeast Washington state, especially at Martin Creek, that invigorates my lungs and triggers happy memories of past visits, times I have gone to Martin Creek alone and times, say, when celebrating JEJ and IEG's wedding that further warms me.

I just always feel good there.

IEG teaches at the Inchelium school, on the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation; over the years she's become intimately involved with the tribe's traditions and food.

So, for this Thanksgiving, IEG served a Pacific Northwest Native American feast with grilled salmon accompanied by Scarlet Autumn Salad and cranberries, squash, root vegetables, nuts, and fruit. You can see the recipes, here.

I urge my writing students all the times to focus on details, to create feeling through physical details, to tell detailed stories.

I honestly can't do that about this day. All I can do is say that I felt warm, at home, felt a deep sense of belonging. I laughed. I prayed thanks. I admired my family:

I also admired the desserts!

Did we play games? Did the rest of the family play games while I rested? Did any funny sayings or memorable quotations come out of this Thanksgiving dinner and weekend?

I can't remember. I'm sure there were no appliance melt downs. No power outage. No stopped up plumbing.

What I remember most is feeling warm, happy, and loved.