[NFBMO] Wall to Wall Thanksgiving

[Daniel Garcia]

Dear Friends:

>From 1990 to 2005, the National Federation of the Blind published a series
of small books called Kernel Books. These books told the story of the
average blind person doing ordinary things, like preparing Thanksgiving
dinner. One of the books, published in the fall of 1997,  had the title of
Wall to Wall Thanksgiving. This was also the title of one of the chapters or
articles published in that book. This article was recently posted in the
Voice of the Nation's Blind Blog. I am copying the text below my signature
for your convenience. You can find this article by clicking on the following
URL:

https://nfb.org/blog/wall-wall-thanksgiving

You can find all the Kernel books by clicking on the following link:

https://nfb.org/resources/jacobus-tenbroek-library/collections/kernel-books

Regards,

Daniel

Daniel Garcia, Second Vice President
National Federation of the Blind of Missouri
dgarcia at nfbmo.org
(816) 621-0902
www.nfb.org
www.nfbmo.org
Live the life you want

***

The Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
By Barbara Pierce

More than thirty years ago now 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 and 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 afternoon. 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 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 drew closer, 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 the 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 our 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 of 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 utensils. 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.https://nfb.org/blog/wall-wall-thanksgiving



-- 

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The National Federation of the Blind 
knows that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your 
future. Every day we raise the expectations of blind people, because low 
expectations create obstacles between blind people and our dreams. You can 
live the life you want; blindness is not what holds you back.



 
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