Thanksgiving memories
November 21, 2007 at 8:44 As a child in New York, Thanksgiving was a cozy holiday with lots of warm memories. How my parents managed to produce a full blown feast from that tiny kitchen on Long Island is a miracle, and where we all sat is lost to memory. The Cape Cod my father built in the 1950s was a small house. There wasn’t a single room in it that could accommodate us all.
My mother’s sister was married to my father’s brother, and on Thanksgiving my aunt, uncle, and my double cousins often came for dinner from New Jersey. My Italian grandmother’s birthday was in late November, and we celebrated it the day after Thanksgiving.
Mom typically made the pies the day before, her apple pies oversized with big bumpy crusts. She made the crusts with margarine, flour, and ice water, rolling them out on the kitchen table with a long wooden pin that her own mother had used. The apples were bought by the bushel from local farmers, peeled and cut into big chunks, not thin slivers. Seasoned with a sprinkle of cinnamon and sweetened with only a handful of raisins, my mother’s pies were tart and natural. I miss my mother's apple pies desperately.
The plain pumpkin pies of my early childhood later morphed into pies with added coconut or pumpkin-apple pies. Sometimes my mom cooked and sieved fresh pumpkin, but more often she used canned. We had mincemeat pies when I was small which evolved into mincemeat-apple combos and then disappeared altogether as I got older, I think because mincemeat had fewer and fewer fans around the table, and my mom always complained it was expensive.
Our turkeys were enormous and stuffed with browned sausage bits, celery, onion, raisins, apple, and white bread, which my parents toasted before tearing it apart. The sweet potatoes were simply baked on the racks around the turkey. We normally had broccoli and cauliflower with cheese sauce, mashed potatoes, and canned jellied cranberry sauce. My father normally made the giblet gravy, and we had cider to drink. My mother had decorative stainless steel serving bowls that she used at the holidays, including a special dish and serving utensil for the slices of canned cranberry sauce. You never see those dishes anymore, but for years my mom always gave them as a wedding shower gift. I have all these dishes of my mom's and use them on the holidays.
After dinner, I remember there being bodies sprawled on every upholstered surface in the house as people napped off their turkey hangovers. My dad and uncle would sit at the table for hours, often engaging in depressing conversations over glasses of whiskey. They seemed to have a propensity for gloomy discussions on Communism or the Second Coming or the next Great Depression. They scared me to death. It was no fun hanging out with the grown ups in the dining room!
Thanksgiving in Virginia was different. The houses we lived in had room for people to spread out. Thanksgiving afforded me a chance to see my grown sisters and their families, which added a whole new level of excitement. It was fun to see the Northern and Southern nieces and nephews get together and have a complete sense of family again. We often went walking through the country side after dinner, a new tradition that I loved.
After I went away to college, Thanksgiving was never the same. When E and I were first married and living in Oklahoma, we had many variations of lackluster Thanksgivings. The first Thanksgiving was fun because it was novel to just be with each other and cook the whole feast ourselves. Then it got old—fast. Everyone we knew spent Thanksgiving with their families and we were never invited to join and didn’t have anyone to invite.
One year I invited an Army lieutenant who critiqued every aspect of my cooking. Another year we attended a church potluck dinner on Thanksgiving and rattled around in a mostly empty parish hall and went home without leftovers. But maybe the worst year was when we joined a friend and his new girlfriend at the Holiday Inn for Thanksgiving. What was worse—eating Thanksgiving at a hotel restaurant or having to listen to his loud insipid girlfriend and her over-the-top social climbing friends?
Then there was the Thanksgiving I spent all alone because E had already moved back to Virginia and I was finishing up my last semester of university in Oklahoma. No dinner invitations came my way. Everyone had plans. I went to a community Thanksgiving dinner at a church that year too and by 1 p.m. my dinner was over and the whole empty weekend stretched before me with only my two dogs for company.
Once we moved back to Virginia, Thanksgiving was bittersweet. I had longed to live in Virginia for years but shortly after I moved back, my parents' health failed. I remember their last Thanksgiving, with my sister visiting and cooking a vegetarian feast next to Mom’s traditional one in the kitchen.
Some people feel all their losses at Christmas, I always feel mine at Thanksgiving. It is by far the toughest holiday for me to get through. We had some happy times with my brothers family after my parents died but mostly we were alone. In 2001, an attempt to spend Thanksgiving in Florida with E’s family dissolved into a really ugly family quarrel among some family members that left everyone upset and several people in tears. After that debacle, my girlfriend Lynn declared that I had had way too many horrible Thanksgivings, and she invited us to join her extended family in South Carolina for Thanksgiving weekend, something we really enjoyed.
In 2004, E’s sister, her husband, four boys, and E’s mom joined us for Thanksgiving weekend. We were packed in tight but had a good time—until my son A ate sour candy at a movie theater Thanksgiving night, washed it down with soda, and later threw up his entire dinner all over the bedroom he was sharing with his four cousins. Now THAT was memorable, especially since the other boys SLEPT through the whole incident while E and I took turns with the nasty cleanup, holding flashlights, trying not to wake anyone up.
Is it any surprise I haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving since then? Here in Belgium, each year we plan a trip that covers all of Thanksgiving week, and we explore a new city and pretend the holiday doesn’t exist (which is easy to do in Europe because Thanksgiving doesn’t exist here). But this year, money is tight, the exchange rate is horrible, and E has done so much business traveling this fall that he’s not eager to leave home. So here we are. Tomorrow while the rest of Belgium goes to work and school, I’ll make a Thanksgiving dinner, working with the ingredients I can get here, and I’ll try to create some good Thanksgiving memories for my kids.
Tell me about your Thanksgiving memories. The best, worst, or a favorite food or activity.
November 21, 2007
Reader Comments (16)
Lo and behold, there were turkey and cranberry sandwiches ... which we bought and sat down to eat. There was more, I can't remember the details as it happened way back when ...
As we were leaving, I couldn't resist pointing out the dead mouse at the entrance to the cafe lol ...
Thanksgiving kiwi-style ;)
Maybe next year they can join you and your parents for Thanksgiving. Hope you get to see them again SOON.
Later that evening, we were all sitting around Ali's hospital bed in the empty ER waiting for test results and eating baloney sandwiches the nurses brought us. Suddenly, our children's former nanny--who had been expecting us that evening for dessert with her family--burst into our cubicle shouting, "Thank God for giving me a good excuse to get away from my in-laws!"
Even our scared, exhausted daughter laughed . . .
I'm so sorry about your sister and the pain that accompanies that loss. I imagine it's both better and worse with children left behind. It's terrible they no longer have their mother, but I hope it's a small consolation to you that she lives on through them and you can honor her memory through them.
My oldest sister died of cancer on my 20th birthday. The last time I saw her alive was Thanksgiving. Those memories haunt me but also heighten my sense of gratitude for my life, my children.
Peace to you and yours.
Consider:
- Church services
- helping out a homeless shelter or food pantry
- visiting a nursing home
- have the loners/singles/away from family folks in your new neighborhood/church/office join your family. Or ask to "adopt" some students from a local university who won't be going home for the holiday.
- "adopting" a less fortunate family and invite them to dinner or take dinner to them and then share part of the Christmas season with this family as well
- make it a "lazy" day -- eat leftovers, watch old movies, work on scrapbooks or creating handmade stocking stuffers
- Write down all the things you are thankful for and then think of some ways to express your gratitude in the coming year (e.g. thankful for health - visit the local VA hospital or pallative care center, thankful for your home - a day with Habitat for Humanity, etc)
Now, Thanksgiving is a day of relaxation, family spirit, and good food with good times. We spend it laughing, really talking, and having our best time together. Our dinner ends up a four-hour event of eating, chatting, making our Christmas lists, remembering relatives fondly (especially my now-gone father and some of our best times with him), and really taking the time to think of what makes us truly thankful for each other.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.
I identify strongly with your childhood memories of Thanksgiving. And, yes, it is a holiday fraught with a roller coaster of emotions. In many ways one of my favorites, but in many other ways, one that points out very clearly how lonesone it can be if you live alone and no one wants you for their "Thanksgiving orphan."
I like Tj's ideas. More of us should do that.
This year my husband and I are going over to my sister's. I am not even cooking because I literally do not have the time. (Part of Thanksgiving day will be spent writing one of the research papers I have to turn in next week. Studying and grading papers is how I am spending the four day weekend.)
Enjoy your Belgian turkey! (I am sure next year will be one of the good old-fashioned Thanksgivings you love to remember.)
But for the next few years, there might be a distant voice reminding me that I could have experienced it myself.
My husband just returned last night from Belgium, and he was explaining himself for a few days. Why are you returning to the U.S. -what holiday? So I was determined to enjoy my last "American" Thanksgiving for several years. Headed out to my parents' home with my children to sleep over and wake up early to help with the turkey. My 5 year old son began to complain of a headache, so we came back to our apt. to get the children's Tylenol. Walked into the kitchen and he proceeded to throw up all over both of us. Murphy's Law!
To those who are missing family around the table this year (furiousball, Claudia), my thoughts are with you.
Good luck. Fingers crossed. Hoping the barf stops with your son and he recovers quickly.
(P.S. My daughter's first stomach bug hit when she was 18 months old and we were staying in a B & B at Christmas. How bad did I feel calling the inn keepers in the night to tell them we needed a complete change of sheets and blankets? I refused to let them touch anything and had them show me the washer and took care of all the laundry myself...and then I got sick the next day...)
Yes, with families scattered all over, it's good to start new traditions to take the place of the big family gatherings that are no longer possible or practical. Some of the ideas you've mentioned are things we've done over the years. I think our "tradition" is that we don't have a "tradition"; every year is different!
Christmas, however, is always the same. We have lots of Christmas traditions, the biggest one being that we keep the mood calm and quiet and celebrate Christmas without a lot of fuss or travel.
The pumpkin apple pie sound yummy!
:)