The mid-sized house smells like clean laundry and cinnamon. The two ovens have been overused and the kitchen reeks of something burning.
Sliding doors are opened because the heat is overwhelming. From the open dining room door, you can see the reasons people have come: family, the mountains, and/or the hot tub. On the back wall sits a glass case filled with linens and china hoping not to be run into by a noise-confused canine. This is Thanksgiving and the word I associate with it is chaos.
Sound infiltrates every part of the house like children. Sometimes you may find the random uncle passed-out on the couch in front of the big screen with a child on his lap; generally Dora or a football game playing on the television.
Mothers yell for older kids and husbands to help set the table and put out food, buffet style. Last minute dishes are still on the stove, as people start appearing to claim a place at the soon to be overcrowded table.
All the small cousins are running around knocking into people who are carrying large ceramic plates heaping with mashed potatoes. The small voices mix into the din talking about special drinks, pies and crazy stories originating from who knows where, people pronouncing about seventy-five percent of the words sideways.
More people are seated and the last to sit down is my grandma, as hard as we try to stop her she is also the one who gets up from the table most. People are seated, itching to cut the turkey and start eating, but first we go around and say what we are thankful for: food, family, education, a house…
A couple of years ago, I don’t know the exact year because I don’t like remembering that stuff, a tumor was found in my grandpa’s left thigh. The news came like a thunderstorm in a Colorado winter.
That thunderstorm came with stressful chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, but it also gave me a reason to spend my weekends in Colorado Springs, to spend time with a sick grandfather and a hardworking grandmother.
I had decided that my grandpa would get better, because after practically being road kill time and time again, running himself into the ground then taking up biking like a fish to water, he had continuously gotten through life scratched up but all together okay.
After months of chemo, radiation and half of his left thigh removed my grandpa Dick was back on his bike. Soon he was already ready for a new knee. I am thankful that he survived his cancer, but that’s not what I would tell people, rather I would say that I am thankful that I can still hike with him and I have had a chance to get to know him better and get closer to my grandpa.
I am thankful I can still be surrounded by the familiar smells of cinnamon and clean laundry, and those who only came for the hot tub.
Eva Wenham is an 8th grader at the Denver School of the Arts.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
