By Thomas Gilchrist

I entered the dining room, and was immediately thrust into a party atmosphere.  Tables, four of them, big, long, covered in white cloths supporting people eating to their hearts content and drinking good wine in each other’s thankful company.

The bounty was aplenty and people gayly laughed and hooted and stood up on chairs and the tables to give speeches, and Senegalese and Americans, and Haitians and Swedes and Brits and Malaysians and Mexicans and French all sat at the same table of heavenly host and tipped their cups to one another in a show of love and admiration.

I was late in arriving, and by the time I got there, the festivities were in full force, though I had received several phone calls encouraging me to come, but I never guessed I would come to this! 

Four turkeys! dismembered and peeled apart for lustful consumption!  forty pounds of mashed potatoes to feed the host of forty thousand! Stuffing! Greens! More stuffing! Mashed Potatoes behind the Mashed Potatoes! Macaroni and Cheese! Fruit!  The finest juices of West Africa!

I was somber as I ate, contemplative of my food, so good, so nourishing, so … as others went back for plate after plate, I ate only the one, but my plate was clean, spotless, revered. 

We sat and discussed life and joys, happy, just sitting, completely content with the world and everything in it and the food in our bellies.  People were sprawled out upon the floor as if there had been a great battle with many casualties–and their had been–and once again the humans had defeated the Turkeys, and the Turkeys had in turn defeated the humans, and thus is life: everyone wins.

As we were sitting there, a man pulled out a guitar and began strumming lovely folk songs he had written about love in Senegal.  The host choir sung to the guitar; things were at peace in the world, this Thanksgiving of good friends and food.

flickr.com image courtesy of roland