Chosen Families

This past week included a day our country celebrates Thanksgiving, a day originally set aside to remember how blessed we are and to thank God for those many blessings. The holiday has become about parades with giant balloons, football games, and the obligatory dinner with family. The Virginia Dickerson Family’s traditional Thanksgiving usually ends up being about the food:

• roasted turkey (we prefer the white meat),
• cornbread dressing (made with lots of cream-of-chicken soup),
• homemade cranberry sauce (my heart soars when fresh cranberries appear in the grocery store),
• one can of Ocean Spray® Jellied Cranberry Sauce (because Cami doesn’t like all the ingredients we put in the homemade stuff),
• fresh green beans (not from a can!),
• corn (frozen is okay, but sweet corn is a necessity),
• roasted zucchini and yellow squash (kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and extra virgin olive oil),
• from-scratch mashed potatoes (my husband’s specialty),
• lasagna (a nod to Michael’s brother David, who doesn’t like turkey so every year, their mom made lasagna to take to Granny’s house),
• sweet potato souffle (or casserole; the recipe changes every year but must include crushed walnuts, cinnamon, and nutmeg),
• and, of course, pie (cherry, pecan, chocolate butter, and whatever other kind of pie Michael wants to try and bake).

When we cook all this food, we can’t possibly eat it all by ourselves, so we invite neighbors and friends to join us. Which means I have to clean the house. And figure out where everyone will sit. (We live in a townhouse, so space is always a concern.) And make sure I have containers to send food home with everyone. And, and, and….

As Thanksgiving approached this year, some things in our family were different than last year. For one, I’m on an eating plan that limits my carbohydrate intake to 80-85 grams per day. I wasn’t sure I could be in the same environment as our traditional Thanksgiving feast and stay on my eating plan. Secondly, in years past when our townhouse was packed with people, Cami and I both ended up on sensory input overload which led to my exploding and her imploding. As much as we love the people we invite to our home, all the visiting in one day is not, for us, conducive to a peaceful holiday.

So we didn’t have a traditional Thanksgiving. We took notes from all the Cami’s Birthday Adventure trips and got outta town. We used our hotel points and drove an hour away from home and did some things we’ve never done before. We still celebrated family and blessings, just in a new way. The weekend’s first activity was risky because Cami normally doesn’t like movie theaters. We never go to movies, choosing instead to watch Red Box® and Netflix® videos at home. We tried it anyway. The First Ever Virginia Dickerson Family Thanksgiving Getaway Adventure started by introducing Cami to an activity my family did often way back when.

When I was growing up, the drive-in movie theater was my family’s splurge of the month. The admission price was by the carload, so that made it affordable for a family of four, even one as stretched financially as we were most of the time. I remember wrapping sodas in aluminum foil so they would stay colder. My mom made hot dogs at home and wrapped them individually in aluminum foil so we could eat them during the movie. She spent the afternoon popping popcorn in the big dutch oven on top of the stove, shaking the pot over the burner until she’d filled a brown grocery sack full of yumminess for us to eat later. My sister and I took our blankets and pillows and camped out in the luggage rack on top of our Plymouth station wagon. I saw John Wayne double-features and several Herbie movies at the drive-in theater with my family back then.

This year, the Virginia Dickersons ate our Thanksgiving dinner at the only drive-in movie theater in Virginia. For less than the admission price Michael and I would pay to see a first-run feature, all three of us, including the dog, saw a first-run family-friendly movie and made some fantastic memories. The gentleman at the ticket booth took our admission money and gave us two dog treats for Roscoe. He explained how they were only showing a single feature that evening because they didn’t expect many people, and it was, after all, a holiday. My husband thanked him for being open on the holiday so we could have a family adventure.

Cami and Roscoe stayed in the warmth of the truck while Michael and I sat outside in lawn chairs to watch the movie. We were one of three cars in the entire parking lot. Because there weren’t that many people, we were able to chat with the concession stand workers, all members of the same family who owned the theater. Michael and Cami ate concession-stand food for dinner: hot dogs, french fries, popcorn, ice cream sandwiches, barbecue sandwiches, and mozzarella sticks. I ate three french fries, two handfuls of popcorn, and a bag of Medifast® cereal. We saw a shooting star. It was magical.

Cassandra Freezing at the Drive-In

What was more magical was how much the experience impressed my girl. Later, back at the hotel, she was writing as usual. As usual, I asked, “Cami, what are you writing?”

“A thank-you note.”

“To whom?”

“The people at the movie theater.”

Wow. In spite of all my stumbling and striving to make the holiday comfortable for myself, my daughter gets it. She gets Thanksgiving better than I do. She took the time to write out her favorite moments and say “thank you” to the people who made those moments possible. I’m ashamed to admit it, but we don’t make a practice of writing thank-you cards. Until the last year or so, getting Cami to write anything was more stressful than simply saying “Thank you” aloud to the giver. She decided on her own to write this note.

We drove to the theater on Friday night to deliver the note personally. We expected to see the same sweet gentleman who gave us our tickets the previous night, but it was someone different. When my husband handed over the note and explained what it was, the lady said, “Oh, Jim will be so tickled to have this. He’s been with his wife all day. She’s in critical care. Maybe this note will brighten things a little for him.”

I asked her if Jim’s wife would be okay. “We hope so. We’d appreciate your prayers.”

Jim’s wife was part of the crew that made our concession food on Thanksgiving night.

(On the front of the folded note)
TO: the owners of the Family drive-in thetre (have to work on spelling that word correctly)
FROM: C.M. Dickerson
DATE: Thanksgiving day, 2012
SUBJECT: one of the movies you showed, Rise of the Guardians

(left column)
I never knew that The Easter bunny had two boomerangs and an Australian accent. Weird, huh?

Now I know that I like drive-in thetres!

Great movie,
Great people,
And a shooting star.
There’s a lot to be thankful for.

(right column)
THANK YOU
(paw print, presumably from Roscoe)

Thank You, Lord, for once again using my daughter to remind me of what really matters. Thank You for loading this journey’s seemingly insignificant moments with meaning.

Thankful for so much, my heart can barely stand it,

Cassandra