Killing Rabbits and Thanksgiving
I’m about to go out and help my dad kill rabbits, though I am still feeling relaxingly sluggish from yesterday’s Sweat. We have a total of 50 to kill, but we’ll probably only get half of them done today. We have a few that are sold already, and I have some stews I want to make. We sell them for $6 each (whole rabbit, already cut up).
It looks like my father and I will be celebrating Thanksgiving alone again this year. Which is fine, we’ve done it before. I had invited my cousin and her boyfriend up but she never got back to me, and it looks like she’s made plans. I felt bad for her because a lot of the family has disowned her because she’s dating a black man, and I wanted her to know that my father and I don’t care, and support her and her decisions. Hell her last boyfriend was white and used to beat her up. This one treats her golden. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM.
Actually one Aunt even said she doesn’t talk to her anymore because she wants to “raise her children right.” I only pray that one of her daughters marries a black man that treats her golden too.
Back on track, I love thanksgiving food. My father and I keep saying we should make turkey on a day other than thanksgiving or christmas, but we never do. So I told him I want a turkey on my birthday next year.
Like my friend Anna, I’m torn about thanksgiving as well. But to be honest, I don’t celebrate thanksgiving for the traditional meaning behind it. And though it still encourages the commercialized and consumerized version of thanksgiving, I hope to at least open other peoples eyes about what it is that they are doing. It shouldn’t just be something to “do”.
I don’t celebrate the genocide of almost an entire race. A race that ironically were the ones that supplied the food to the “first thanksgiving”, as the pilgrim settlers were dying off and had very little. I also don’t celebrate the mass slaughter of factory tortured turkey’s. Which is why every year we buy from a local farmer (usually my uncle). And I’m trying to convince my dad that there is a market for local home-grown organic turkey’s, and if we just raise..5 of them every year, we could sell the rest and have turkey for ourselves.
But I celebrate to give honor to my ancestors, all of my ancestors, not just my Cherokee ones. Especially this year, given how much I’ve discovered about my family. I give thanks for my father, and our little home here. Sometimes it may not seem like we have much, and it gets so frustrating being poor. But we are happy, and my finances are stable. I give thanks for my Grove, that brought me to my best friends, and all the people from ADF that I talk to semi-regularly. Some of which I admire more than they know.
I guess just being grateful in general for the life I have been given, the path I am following, and the people I have met. For they all contribute to who I am.
Course I’m also of the mind that you should be grateful for these things all year, and make excuses to get together and celebrate with good food on other days, not just Thanksgiving.
Entry viewed times. Posted in Dad, Fond Memories
