Solara Speaks

The Festival of Light and Thanksgiving

By Solara Key

When I was in first grade, my mom, dad, and I met a family from India. They invited us to a Hindu ceremony, which I loved. I played the little finger cymbals, while members of the Hindu congregation chanted Hari Krishna. Later that night, we feasted on Indian cuisine, and I devoured every tasty morsel on my plate. They embraced us as part of their family, and we remain so to this day. Friday, November 4, we were invited to their home to celebrate the “Festival of Light.” When we pulled up to their home, it was elegantly decorated in lights, outside and inside. Again, there was another delicious Indian spread across the table. We met people from all over the world. This is the America I love…unprejudiced, and a melting pot from everywhere.

This brings me to my next point. When we first became acquainted with our Indian family, the Agarwal, I asked “why don’t you eat meat?” She replied, “we eat nothing with a face on it.” That is all it took. I was to become a vegetarian for life!!!! I also talked my mom and dad into joining in on my new eating adventure. My mom makes me eat salmon, but from first grade till this day, that is the only thing I eat with “a face on it!” Now, my parents have always made a big deal out of every holiday, ours as well as our friends from other countries.

My mom loves crocheting Native American dolls, tepees, pilgrims, pumpkins and scarecrows, and they line our fireplace and front porch, along with mums we plant every year in pots. I refuse to give up Thanksgiving!! I walk into stores after the 4th of July, and they are crammed with Halloween and Christmas. Maybe somewhere some stores have a faint reminder of Thanksgiving.

It is a family tradition that we go to my mom’s relatives in Chapel Hill, Tennessee for a family get-together. There are legends that I love to hear about. My aunt and uncle bought a dairy farm when $100 seemed like a million. They worked hard and made it work. When my uncle became upset at the trucks picking up the milk, he dumped his milk out, (as the local news camera captured it for the 5:00 news,) before he would let a less than adequate truck haul his milk to the consumer.

He bought some trucks to haul milk, still when $100 seemed like a million. They worked hard and made it work...again. When my aunt and uncle retired, their kids took over, while my uncle spent his retirement buying, selling, trading, and training mules. He even had people come from the Grand Canyon to get his mules. Every time we pulled up to their house, you could hear the mules bray. I also love hearing funny stories of how my mom’s cousin would grab her by the ankles, turn her upside down, and dip the top of her head into a fresh pile of cow manure until she would say “uncle.”

She would never say “uncle,” and claims that he just made her more stubborn, but was responsible for her having such thick hair today from all the fertilizer on her head. And what about Thanksgiving without eating turkey? Our family is so busy laughing, talking, and catching up on what everyone is doing, while eating lots of other wonderful southern food, that we forget about the turkey staring us in the face. (There would be well over 100 of us if everyone came.) After spending quality time with aunts, uncles, and cousins, we then come home to have a small celebration, just our immediate family. There is no turkey smell coming from our oven, however, sometime before Thanksgiving Day, my dad decided we could not possibly have Thanksgiving without some kind of turkey.

He returned home from the store with a huge box full of “Tofurkey.” It looked like a big hunk of tofu that is suppose to resemble a turkey. It was worse than bad, and had the taste of what I can imagine a cardboard box might taste like. After the first bite all of us looked at each other and laughingly offered our plate full of “Tofurkey” to Heidi, our Boston terrier. Even Heidi refused the warm bite of Tofurkey! My mom’s favorite saying, “You are not going to rain on my parade!” is no exception now. She goes into action knowing there has to be a replacement for the turkey and Tofurkey we will not be eating.

She feels as if we have lost the meaning of how it all started anyway, and decided we should go to the local Native American Pow Wow. Seeing the Native Americans would remind us of Plymouth Rock when the Pilgrims came, and how the Native Americans helped them lean how to plant. When I saw the Pow Wow, I wondered if the Pilgrims thought they must have landed on a “galaxy, far, far away,” to quote my favorite movie. Not wanting to break the mood of the first Thanksgiving, as mom calls it, my dad wanders into the room donning his “Chief Burning Salsa” gear. “Kendall, you are one card short of a full deck,” mom says. What’s it like here during Christmas? Tune in next month……you never know what our bunch will be up to. Happy Thanksgiving, Ya'll. I hope you are enjoying the new Junior World Black Belt Web site. It is great for all of us kids. Don’t forget the Discussion Forum....I would love to talk to you, or you can e-mail me at: solarakey@worldblackbelt.com

This has been a Youth E-Zine Article.