Holiday memories

Since Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK, I thought I'd share one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories; but first, a little background...

When we were in CA and Chris' unit was preparing to go to Iraq, they had "Gas Mask Wednesday's" where everybody wore their gas masks strapped to their hip (leg?) and throughout the day the command took great joy in making them wear put the gas mask on and answer the phones. I really can see where they would get great joy out of this and used to call Chris' office way too many times on a Wednesday just to see if he really would answer with his gas mask on. I digress.

More background. My job in CA was the event coordinator for the Armed Services YMCA. I planned fundraising events as well as morale and fun events. Thanksgiving was one of my favorites because we placed 1,000 young Marines who were still in training (out of boot camp, but in a school) and only got one day out of the field for Thanksgiving with local families so that they could enjoy a home cooked meal and time away from the barracks. I loved it. It was fast paced on Thanksgiving morning and extremely rewarding when the guys came back with full tummies.

One year the day before Thanksgiving, I got sick. I have a kidney condition and it pretty much puts me out of commission when it flares up. The only thing the doctors do is give me pain meds and tell me to rest. I left work early, went home and laid on the couch. There was so much to do though. I was in charge of the turkey and dressing for dinner with our friends for Thanksgiving AND I had 1,187 Marines that were going home with strangers the next day. I decided to take Wednesday so that I could function on Thanksgiving. I asked Chris if he could please help by making the dressing. Chopping and mixing needed to be done so that I could just throw it in the oven the next day. I gave him the instructions, took my pain pills, and laid on the couch so that he could ask questions. He started by chopping the celery, asking me every few minutes if I was OK. I started to doze off (pain pills do that ya know). I couldn't stop thinking about how wonderful it was that the man who doesn't cook (I mean, we're talking he boils water and heats soup in the microwave - this is all I had seen him do in the 3 years we'd been together - seriously) was doing this. It was my Nana's recipe and was pretty involved - not hard, but home made and was lots of chopping and since I had grown up making this dressing with Mom and Nana, I didn't know the exact measurements - we just always did enough that it looked right. I heard him tell me he was switching to onions and I think I opened my eyes and acknowledged him and told him to let me know when he was done. Our kitchen was open and I could see into the kitchen and dining room from the couch (It was a fairly small apartment). After what seemed like an hour later (but was probably only 15 minutes) I opened my eyes to check on him and was quite startled (and amused) to find my husband standing in the kitchen in his camis (the green tree looking uniform he'd been wearing all day and hadn't changed otu of) and the GAS MASK! He said the onions were just too strong and since it was there on his hip, he figured he would use it. So, there you have it. Marines can be pepper sprayed, sent to the gas chamber for training, go through physical and psychological training that would send most of us crying, but don't you dare cut up an onion around them.

That year for Christmas, he recieved, one pair of goggles, two hand made aprons (one proudly claiming "Gas Mask Chef), and an electric food chopper. It's really hard to let him live it down, but in all honesty, my happiest thought of that day is the fact that he was willing to jump right in to unfamiliar territory and take over so that I could have my favorite holiday food while we were thousands of miles away from our families. If that's not love, I don't know what is.