Each year in the US, the period of time from the last days of summer through the end of December seems more and more like an overgrown garden. It is hard to perceive the holidays separately from one another. There are no pathways between them, no mulch to keep them apart.

How can we sort out our holidays and write about them when the needs of commerce rush us from one to the next? I hope the following exercise can help you write from the occasion of Thanksgiving.

When the Pilgrims came to America and landed in Massachusetts in 1620, they planted seeds from England. Their crops did not thrive in the new environment. Cultural lore tells us that they might have all starved had the Native Americans not taught them about growing indigenous food. According to this story, when the Pilgrims harvested their new crops, they held a feast and invited their Native American allies, who came with food as well. The first Thanksgiving may have lasted for days. Later, George Washington made Thanksgiving a national holiday and Abraham Lincoln revived it when it fell out of favor. No matter what our background or beliefs, on Thanksgiving we give thanks together as a nation for the resources that sustain us — food, shelter, jobs, friends and loved ones.

One Thanksgiving, my mother read about a ritual in the local newspaper and asked if we could do it at our table. We passed around a plate of dried beans and everyone took one. Then we passed around a cup and everyone in turn told what they were thankful for that year and dropped their bean into the cup. There was fulfillment in the sound of the beans dropped into the cup, in the different voices around the table, and the symbol that thanks were mounting. Our tiny hill of beans was endowed with the hearts of our family and friends.

Many years later I wrote this poem:

Thanksgiving, 1994

I look at my parents at the end of the table,
retired and somewhat ailing. “Chartreuse,” I say,
and they all look at me–I am remembering
the color of their couch when I was small;
I give thanks for the little girl I was, knowing
even then big words were on my tongue.

 Then I think of Charlotte russes, the whipped cream
dessert my mother loved, her percolator and the shoes
she called perambulators, the first washing machine
I saw, its long crank and two rubber cylinders ringing clothes.

The memory goes with rides up the Garden State Parkway
and the way my father’s chinos rubbed
his Chevy’s seat as he wrestled for his wallet
at toll plazas and the lights turned green.

****

I was thankful for chartreuse, for memories from my childhood that made me happy, for my parents, still alive and with us that day. I think I was able to write this poem because of the ritual my mother had initiated.

If you want to write for Thanksgiving, figure out what you could place in a cup — a seed, an item you cherish or something funny-to create your cup full of thanks. You might want to use a sentence like, “I place clover leaf into this cup of thanks. With clover leaf, I remember how I am grateful for what has created the nutritious soil of my life…” After you have created such a sentence, keep writing.

Catch some time (in your car in grocery store parking lots works) to write your holiday memories full of surprise, dedication, commitment, joy, humor and nostalgia. Your notes and vignettes will provide you with images and thoughts for future essays and poems. And hopefully, you’ll find time to revise when the holiday season is over.

When you take the time to put your holiday memories, thoughts and feelings down on the page, you might begin to feel the season slow down a bit, as if you are creating a garden path.