Day 171
No matter where we are living, we celebrate Thanksgiving. We take our recipes with us from country to country. It took many years for me to truly understand Thanksgiving, even though is was always one of my five favorite holidays along with Halloween, Easter, St. Nicholas Day, and Christmas. On the surface it poses as one of the more basic holidays, but when you dig deeper it’s quite the opposite.
Since neither of my parents grew up with Thanksgiving in their countries, we didn’t observe the custom. I wasn’t aware of how the day worked, what its nuances were. I was a teenager when I went to my first Thanksgiving meal at the Kreiders, a family from the St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship. Most churches have one especially generous family who takes in strays, people who don’t have family close by or are struggling in some way. We double qualified.
That Thanksgiving I saw for the first time a long table set for a special meal, like it was waiting for royalty. I was
mesmorized. Growing up we didn’t eat at the table or if we did it was on a corner where we pushed the books back far
enough to put our bowl. We usually ate on our laps or standing. But this Thanksgiving table was waiting for important people, each place setting meticulously prepared. One hour later, I was sitting at one of those place settings like a Disney princess. I could feel the proud glow coming off of me, I felt like someone incredibly special. During the meal people laughed, talked, and lingered for hours. I was quiet, just trying to absorb and lock away every detail. I didn’t want it to be over. That was what I set out to recreate someday, somehow, that feeling.
At college, a new aspect of Thanksgiving came to light that went beyond stunning table settings. Like an unconscious
sacred migration, every student, with the exception of a few from distant countries, would go home. It didn’t matter if they lived in the furthest states away like Oregon or Florida. Their parents would foot the bill to bring them home for essentially one meal, followed by two more days when they caught up on sleep, then travel back. I didn’t understand the point, couldn’t foot that bill, and there was no meal waiting for me. But I always had a close friend who would invite me to their home for Thanksgiving.
In their homes I got a glimpse of families having candid family Thanksgiving moments, and it was amazing. They talked, laughed, played cards, horsed around. It’s not that everything was perfect, there’s always history lurking about, long-standing disagreements, but that’s the added beauty of it. If anything, getting together is more about celebrating family imperfection than some unattainable perfection. We love each other regardless of our shortcomings and messiness in our lives. It’s a touchstone moment once a year to acknowledge the significant people of our life and be grateful they are in it, that we’re in it together. Thanksgiving has a pure family focus to it, it’s unique. There’s nothing added to fluff it up. Other holidays are about family but also have other distractions like presents, trees, costumes, candy, eggs, and chocolate. These are distractions I wouldn’t give up, but they are distractions nonetheless. Thanksgiving celebrates the people around that table with whom you are sharing your life. Period.
The first time I made a Thanksgiving meal on my own, the girls were young and it was a disaster. I didn’t know turkey couldn’t be put in the oven frozen or that it had a bag of turkey parts in it you were supposed to remove. I didn’t tie in the legs, baste, or cover it. A friend said I should put a little water in the bottom of the roaster. More is always better, so I put in a couple inches. After a few hours I pulled out what looked like a whithered desert road kill sitting in a greasy puddle, with a mystery bag floating around. Soup it is. While it was a cooking flop, it was still one of the happiest meals of my life, because what I dreamed of having in my life were the people sitting around that cheap kitchen table with me. It had happened.
Decades later, I get it. We are those parents who will fly our kids home to have them with us. Our Thanksgiving menu has been crafted and honed to perfection. If a recipe needs tweeking for next year, we make meticulous notes. While I know the kids get tired the story about how we ate turkey soup at our first Thanksgiving, I tell it anyway. We take the time to make the table beautiful. The care and attention spent on the setting and the food says, you are my royalty, you are treasured, and I’m over the moon that I’m sharing my life with each of you. Now let’s eat soup.
My other Thanksgiving post http://www.gotraveloco.com/in-search-of-parisien-pumpkin-pie/