Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving

Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving

Barbara Pierce

The Wall-to-Wall

Thanksgiving

by Barbara Pierce

From the Editor: The following recollection

first appeared in the NFB Kernel Book of the same name. We reprint it here with the hope

that your Thanksgiving in 1998 will be filled with love, friendship, and gratitude despite

the sorrow that necessarily shadows our lives this autumn. As usual, the story begins with

Dr. Jernigan's introduction.

Barbara Pierce is no stranger to Kernel Book

readers, having appeared in these pages frequently. The remarkable thing about her current

story is that it records truly unremarkable events— the sort that occur regularly in

any typical household. Read her heartwarming account of her young family's efforts to

celebrate traditional American holidays while living in London and see if you don't come

to believe that we who are blind are people—just like you in more ways than not. Here

is what she has to say:

Almost twenty years ago my English-professor

husband Bob; our three children (Steven, nine; Anne, six; and Margaret, just four); and I

packed up and moved to London for the school year. Bob was to teach our college's London

semester program during the fall semester. (This would give our American students the

experience of studying and living in England.) Bob would then spend the spring doing his

own scholarship during his sabbatical leave. The children, including little Margy, would

all attend school, and I planned to keep house, try my hand at writing a book, and spend

time getting to know the members of the National Federation of the Blind of the United

Kingdom.

We were lucky to find a small house to rent in

one of the outlying suburbs. The elementary school was nearby, as were the shops where I

would spend a good deal of time and the tube station from which Bob would leave for

central London every morning. Best of all, our next-door neighbor had a niece around the

corner who was willing to baby-sit for us during the evenings when Bob and I went to the

theater with his students.

We settled in easily, and the shopkeepers became

accustomed to my long white cane, American accent, two-wheeled shopping trolley, and

occasional gaggle of children. Expeditions to the butcher, greengrocer, chemist, and

grocery shop were easier and faster without the youngsters, but so were cleaning the house

and writing. Besides, the girls especially loved to "go to the shops" with me,

so we quickly became an institution in the neighborhood.

By late October the whole family had become

acclimatized to life in London. The children had made friends and were developing English

accents. I was resigned to washing school uniforms in the bath tub on the days when I

didn't go to the laundromat. And Bob had established a warm relationship with his

students.

We decided that on the Saturday before Halloween

we should invite the whole class to supper. They had tickets to a Saturday matinee

performance of a Shakespeare play, so it would be easy for all of them to come back to the

house together at the close of the performance.

I didn't even consider attending the play that

day. After all, somebody had to prepare supper for that crowd, and I didn't think that the

baby-sitter and the children would get very far picking up the living room, much less

setting out the food I had prepared.

Steven had been somewhat disappointed at missing

Halloween at home in Ohio with its costumes and trick or treating, so we decided to do

what we could to celebrate this important annual rite of American childhood with our

party. I made a big chocolate cake and let the children tint the butter frosting a

shocking shade of orange. We managed to find candy corn and witches with which to decorate

our masterpiece.

But the real triumph of the meal was to be the

loaf of home-made bread. I had decided that, considering the small rooms of our house, I

would have to settle for feeding the students sandwiches and potato

chips—"crisps" in London.

I arranged a large tray of sliced meats and

cheeses and another of fresh vegetables and dip. I bought several sorts of rolls and small

interesting loaves. But in the center of the table was a large loaf of potato bread in the

shape of a jack-o-lantern, complete with eyes, eye brows, ears, nose, and mouth full of

snaggly teeth.

Anne was regretful that I would not agree to make

the bread orange or allow her to frost the finished loaf with the left-over icing from the

cake. But despite its shortcomings in the eyes of the children, our pumpkin was the hit of

the evening.

Bob and the students were late getting home from

the play, and in the interim a glass of liquid got spilled by one of the children, but it

hardly dampened the upholstery or the spirits of the party. The students were delighted to

be in a home with children to play with. And you would have thought I had prepared a

banquet for them instead of a simple supper.

When I saw them at the theater during the early

weeks of November, they continued to talk wistfully about the fun they had had with our

family. As Thanksgiving approached, I began to realize that I was going to have to do

something about the holiday. It isn't celebrated in England, of course, and our American

students were beginning to feel homesick at the prospect of being so far away from family

for the holiday. But having sixteen students in for sandwiches and finger food on paper

plates and doing a complete Thanksgiving dinner for them were two very different things.

For one, we had six plates and about as many sets

of silverware. There was almost no counter space in the kitchen, and though the stove had

four burners, the oven was half the size of my oven at home. But it was clear that,

problems or no, Thanksgiving was going to be celebrated in memorable style in the Pierce

home that year. I asked each student to bring a plate and silverware for each person that

he or she was bringing to dinner, and I invited them all to bring along some contribution

of food.

Meanwhile I had managed to find one of those

large foil disposable roasting pans in a local department store. Much to my relief, when I

got it home, it actually fit into my oven. I took it off to the butcher and asked him to

get me the largest turkey that would fit into the pan.

He did so, and he even agreed to keep it in his

freezer for me until I was ready to cope with it. The day before the Feast, as the

children began calling that Thanksgiving, I stopped to make sure that the butcher had

moved the turkey from the freezer into his cooler for me. He assured me that he had and

that it would be thawed for me in the morning. Relieved from that nagging worry, I went

home to get on with my preparations.

When I went into the kitchen to begin dinner, I

discovered to my horror that the oven would not light. Here was a nightmare indeed.

Luckily the Gas Board was not about to shut down for a long holiday weekend, so they

promised that someone would be around first thing in the morning to see about the cooker.

My dreams were filled that night with

catastrophes in which I was trying to roast turkeys over matches. But in the morning we

experienced a whole series of miracles. First, the Gas Board man turned up early. Second,

he discovered that there was nothing seriously wrong with the stove, and he could and did

fix it immediately.

The third event took a little longer to resolve

itself into a miracle. It began by looking remarkably like a catastrophe. While I stayed

home to deal with the stove and the other preparations, Bob took the children with him to

do the last-minute shopping, including picking up the turkey. I was busy finishing the

stuffing when I realized that in the distance I was hearing Margy crying as the Pierce

parade drew near our house.

I raced to the door to see what the trouble was.

I could hardly believe the news; the butcher had not in fact transferred the turkey to the

cooler as he had alleged; when Bob handed it to me, it was eighteen pounds of rock-hard

meat—giblets and neck firmly tucked inside the body cavity. Though Margy was the only

one actually in tears, all three children were certain that Thanksgiving had just

crash-landed in the butcher's freezer.

There are moments when a parent has no choice but

to set aside anger, frustration, and anxiety and simply rally all available reserves in

the emergency. I dried Margy's tears and assured everybody that the day could be saved.

Then the turkey and I retired to the kitchen sink

for some close communion with warm water. It was not the correct way to defrost poultry,

but I told myself that, if I could just pry the giblets out and pack the stuffing in

quickly, I could get the bird on to roast before anything nasty began growing in the meat.

It worked. By late afternoon we were ready for

the Feast, and the students began to arrive, bearing an unusual collection of dishes.

Including several strays picked up by various people along the way, twenty-three happy

Americans eventually sat down to Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, we sat down all over the

house. The living and dining room floors were covered with bodies, and six of us sat on

the steps to the second story. We had a marvelous time! The food was delicious, and the

fellowship was unforgettable. I don't even remember the clean-up.

Everyone had so much fun that we decided to do it

again the following year when we were all back in the United States. By then many of the

students had graduated, but they returned to Oberlin for Thanksgiving and a reunion of the

London semester group.

In some ways the two celebrations were very

different. There were no crises the second time around. I managed to come up with enough

dishes and silver to serve everyone without asking people to bring their own. And the

clean-up was a snap with an electric dishwasher on the job.

But the underlying spirit from the year before

was still there. The young people were delighted to be in our home and grateful to us for

inviting them. My recollections of these happy and deeply satisfying events are filled

with remembered warmth and gratitude. They are for me, as they would be for anyone else,

the very stuff of pleasant family history.

But there is one element of these celebrations

which is uniquely precious to me. My blindness, which to me has become nothing more than

one more of my characteristics, went virtually unregarded by the students. I don't mean

that they pretended that it wasn't there. They made an effort to move out of my path when

I came through carrying food or drink.

But the fact of my blindness was as unimportant

to them as it had become to my husband and children. I remember times like these and renew

my hope that the time will come when all blind people will know the freedom for which I am

so deeply grateful. This, incidentally, is why I believe so strongly and participate so

actively in the work of the National Federation of the Blind.