Anyway, Thanksgiving was always about the perfect meal, the perfect table, and a quiet deaf dinner ambiance, since it was usually just the four of us and the blinking televisions. One thing about the perfect table, it was set with lace tablecloth, corelle-ware, and crystal bowls with cranberries, pickles, an assortment of dinner accoutrement's. And then there were the Wax Thanksgiving Candles.http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/42514. I remember them as far back as I can remember. A big mulit-crayola colored hued Turkey, a little Turkey, a Pilgrim, A Mommy Pilgrim, A Indian, and an Indian Maid . My relatives might have had the expanded family of Little Pilgrim Children and Little Indian Children... but my memory says; we only had these Thanksgiving Wax Candles: Pilgrim, Pilgrim Wife, Indian, Indian Maid, Big Turkey, Little Turkey. They commanded the center of the table and they were NEVER lit. A serious dead look would come from my Mother if someone said, "Let's light the candles!" "No, they're only for pretty" she would sign.
So one day, bored, with the blinking televisions on, probably doing homework at the table, I noticed, that the Pilgrim, Indian, and the Indian Maid no longer had eyes or mouths! Someone had taken their fingernail and scraped the painted wax dot eyes and mouths off their faces! They were blind, mute! AH! I shot a look at my little sister... really? Mom would kill us. Of course, my mom noticed, gave us a stern "WHAT FOR-WHY?" sign, and then left them on the table... blind and mute Pilgrims and Indians. It was a sad commentary on Thanksgiving. The candles were there for a few more years, and then my mom tired of the doll-like old decor; just put them somewhere.
Years later when I returned home from college for Thanksgiving break; I would say.. "Hey where are those cute candles we used to have? My mom would sign "Well you girls defaced them and ruined them so we don't have them any more." I was sad, knowing that I was getting older and a little piece of my nostalgia had created a bad memory for my mom. She replaced the ruined dolls with new ceramic vibrant Gold Turkeys to match her new Gold Checked wallpaper to go with the Gold, Burnt Orange and Brown recently remodeled kitchen that she was so PROUD of.
I never thought of those candles again. After countless Thanksgivings at my parents home with new grandchildren in place, relatives that would come and share our family gathering, new table settings would come and go. It wasn't until four years ago, almost to the week; that those eyeless, mouthless candles re-appeared. It was Thanksgiving 2006, and my mother was in Hospice...dying. Of course, we didn't have a real Thanksgiving that year. My father had just died, we were eating some kind of meal that we numbly put together because no matter what was going on at Hospice, we needed to have the sense that Thanksgiving would go on, and we were thankful to be there with our mom. It was her last days; and my sister and I were in the basement of my mom's house-searching for something. It seems bizarre now; but we needed to be in the basement, finding our memories. Something to cling onto because we couldn't cling on to what was happening at the Hospice house. It was awful. Rummaging through old Christmas stuff, old picnic items, vintage cooking appliances; stored in the cold cupboard was a white paper bag. It was the WAX THANKSGIVING candles. We screamed! It was a sign, it had to be! So we then and there decided that we would always have these candles at our family Thanksgivings...despite no eyes, no mouths.. we didn't care. I was given the treasured white paper bag with the candles and tucked them away at my house.
The following year, I bravely stated that I would host Thanksgiving. In our first year without our parents; my sister and I still wanted to have some semblance of what was our Thanksgiving tradition--will always be? Of course that isn't true today; but three years ago, my sister and I wanted so much to hang on to that. I looked for the little white paper bag with the treasured candles about a week before the festivities. I located the bag in a dresser drawer in a upstairs bedroom. Upstairs guest room, that probably never had a window open all summer, and where it probably got to 100 degrees that August since that was the summer of fires and heat. Inside the paper bag, was a melted wax ball of hideous brown, white, blue. Eyeless faces melted into wax turkey feathers. I screamed and just cried. I cried like it was the funeral again. Because in a way it was.
I cried to my sister that I had ruined Thanksgiving, and I was desperately looking for replacement candles. "They don't make them anymore! Did you know that?" I thought I could just go to Micheal's Crafts and they would be proudly standing there. I was defeated, sad, and felt awful as my sister's family came to join us for Thanksgiving. I put some lame ceramic Pilgrims and Indians on my table that I found on clearance at Joanne's Fabrics. It was insulting. I walked into my dining room after helping my nephews unload the car; and there on my table were the WAX THANKSGIVING candles! My sister found them. EBAY! She found enough for my table, her table, and our kids tables for years to come. She found the Thanksgiving Six, along with the little pygmie pilgrim-indian families. To this day, I cannot thank her enough. She told a great story of finding them, her whole office helping her outbid other Ebay freaks to save my Thanksgiving.
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