SUZANNE TATE: Special Requests For Food, Travel Honored At Thanksgiving

Devilled eggs and pumpkin pie were the two insistent Thanksgiving menu requests from my sons. My daughter didn’t have a recipe request, but she surprised me with her desire to go to Norfolk for the holiday.

The drawbacks were obvious. It’s a 400-mile trek from Bristol to the coast, a seven-hour drive punctuated by potty breaks, sibling rivalry and my aching, arthritic knees.

The good parts? Gasoline has dropped below $2 a gallon. My parents miss us. The kids’ cousins are itching to see them. My mom is a fantastic cook.

I was particularly touched by my daughter’s reasoning. Initially we planned to stay in the region and join my in-laws in Wise for the holiday. The boys were pretty flexible either way. Surprisingly, Hannah was pretty strident: “But we always go to Norfolk for Thanksgiving, Mom.”

At nearly 14, she is prone to theatrics and hyperbole. But in this case she was right. We might have missed a year or two in her lifetime, but we do typically spend Thanksgiving in Norfolk.

So my mom bought extra eggs to give my son, Nelson, the opportunity to try his hand at making devilled eggs for everyone. She also whipped up an extra pumpkin pie for my younger son, Miles, who so loves pumpkin pie that he would try to eat a whole one in one sitting, if left unattended.

My daughter’s desire to go to Norfolk is likely complicated – like all the inner workings of a teenager’s brain.

I know she loves her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, but she certainly hates the long car trip. I know she is hoping for some mall trips in Norfolk, which has a wealth of stores she loves. She’s getting old enough to care more about “traditions,” especially if they include something special for her (of course).

Her insistence to go to Norfolk made me think more about how I had spent Thanksgiving as a child. My family’s ritual was to go to the Sampson County, N.C., farm where my father was raised.

We drove five hours from Norfolk to a decidedly different locale – dirt roads, well water and plain old quiet. My brother and I shared a room at the farm house; the one formerly occupied by my great-grandparents. We slept on antique cherry beds, in the farmhouse built in the 1850s. My own parents slept across the hall in my dad’s childhood bedroom.

There were no after-Thanksgiving shopping trips, (it didn’t seem the area stores were even open then) but the farm was an exciting place for kids to explore.

It was 100 acres – some of it cleared and planted in corn or soybeans – and much of it wooded. Even in the 1970s, little was still planted in tobacco. There was a fish pond behind the farm house, stocked with bream. And you could nearly get lost in the wild grapevines that grew up over the old smokehouse.

My dad spent these visits doing whatever was needed – cutting and burning brush, raking leaves, trimming limbs. He would re-cane old chairs, repair locks, check plumbing and literally mend fences. He was the only son and wanted to be as physically useful as he could.

Often, at Thanksgiving, he would climb high into the pecan trees that sat between the house and the road. He would shake the limbs, sometimes jumping on them, to free as many nuts as possible. I remember my mother scolding him, fearing he would fall.

We would gather the fallen nuts in baskets, then sit on the porch and crack pecans until our hands were sore.

I know, kids today would think it was torture. We hardly watched television. We spent most of the days outside; and a lot of it working. But it was tremendous fun.

This year, we certainly didn’t expect as much physical labor out of the family members. We gathered at my parents’ house along the Lafayette River in Norfolk. We pitched in to prepare, and then devour, a feast.

Last year the weather was warm enough for shorts and boat rides.

This year it was blustery cold.

But we were thrilled to have extended family from Norfolk and Virginia Beach join us and to visit with friends and former neighbors.

And with extra eggs and a pumpkin pie, and surrounded by people who love us, we couldn’t go wrong.

Suzanne Tate is the opinion page editor at the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at (276) 645-2534 or .