There’s an old joke about a lady who is standing over the freezer case full of Butterball turkeys with a scowl on her face. She snags a passing stocker.
“These are too small. Do they get any bigger?”
“No, Ma’am,” the stocker answered, “They’re dead.”
This year, I suspect that Thanksgiving will get bigger. Released from most of the restrictions of the past two years, families can once again congregate at an unfortunate relative’s house and enact the annual Thanksgiving psycho-drama.
But enough about my family.
Last Thanksgiving I talked about some of the things we once did at Hill House to celebrate the day of the turkey. This year I will share some random thoughts. I believe there are two divergent attitudes prevalent in the hearts of those tired folks whose task it is to prepare the meal for seven, or fourteen or however many of you choose to show up…thanks for letting me know. There are the providers and the pleasers.
Providers plan for all the traditional fall feast foods. Some they cook, some they outsource to those who ask, “What Can I bring?” Some of the delicacies might even come directly off a grocery shelf or red and wobbly right out of the can. By providing an abundance of choices, a provider’s attitude is, “Here it is, there is bound to be something you like.”
I find I fall into this category albeit perhaps on the curmudgeonly fringe. I believe that if you can’t find something you like in this bounty of foods, bring what you will eat. I call it the BYOTT Rule. If you or your child eat only Tater Tots, then feel free to tote those tots right in. I have a friend who is a pescatarian. I didn’t know what that was either but it sounded fishy. He will not be coming for Thanksgiving but if he were, I would advise him to either fill up on the oyster casserole or come bearing flounder. Heat those Tater Tots or flounder or chicken nuggets beforehand, though. Our oven will be full of real food.
My lovely spouse hails from the other Thanksgiving variety…the pleaser. My Mother-in-Law, Bless her heart, goes well out of her way to be certain that everyone’s preference, no matter how quirky, will be prepared and ready when they arrive. If her children like three different recipes for potato salad, there will be three different potato salads on the counter. When my son, Michael, didn’t like real mashed potatoes, there would be a bowl of instant mashed potatoes right beside the real ones. What a great heart she has but I would find so much care exhausting.
My Mother used to prepare a meal for somewhere between fifteen and twenty people every year. I admit that she, too was a bit of a pleaser. Even as an adult, if I put green beans on my plate, she would remind me that I didn’t like green beans.
She was right. I didn’t like them…when I was seven.
Eventually, to save her sanity Dad suggested that they begin a new tradition of Thanksgiving at the beach, Mom jumped at the chance. From that point on we would gather, eight or nine of us plus an occasional beloved friend or two, and eat a dinner mostly prepared by a local restaurant but augmented by family members. (Almost nobody caters oyster casserole and about homemade pecan pie, well, it’s homemade with pecans and Karo syrup and vanilla. ‘Nuff said.)
We first stayed in Hallman Hall, a two-story white frame house behind the miniature golf course at Springmaid. Don’t look for the house or the miniature golf course now, the parking garage and progress did those in. Later we moved to other locations. Once we stayed at a front row house at Garden City. When my older children, Kate and Case were running late, Cheryl and I stood in the yard looking for them. Eventually they came up the road in Case’s green Suzuki Samurai, waved at us and rode right on by. Case says it was intentional but it does fit a pattern of goofiness that runs deep in the family.
While I told the story of a bitterly cold Thanksgiving boat ride in the episode called “Big Bob, the Float Boat and the Big Chill,” most Thanksgivings were warm enough to spend time in the sun and one of my favorite photos of Mom was of her walking on the beach with her grandson Case. She was at the point in her dementia that she could no longer cook, but she remembered who she loved.
She also never tired of searching for a bargain. Every Thanksgiving had to include a trip to Big Lots if there was one within 50 miles. She would search up and down the aisles tossing any unusual vinegar into the cart. “Mike likes vinegar,” she would always say. A can of smoked oysters and a lap quilt might join a set of scrub brushes and her day was made. Once, while we were at the Big Lots in Myrtle Beach, the management was giving away prizes in a trivia contest. When a question came over the PA system, I heard Mom call me from across the store. “Mike, Do you know the answer?” When I found her and admitted that I did, she gave me the Mama Dot semi-eye roll tight lipped look and said, “Well, Go up there and tell them!”
I won a coffee cup with a Big Lots logo on it. With the next question, I got the same orders. After two cups and a soup mug I had to whisper, “Mom, Let’s give someone else a chance.”
It takes so little to make mothers proud.
With so many homespun family tales about Thanksgiving, we should think about the real purpose of the holiday. We should think about something beyond Pilgrims in funny hats and buckle shoes and the native people who kept our ancestors from starving on that first winter in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I should and you should but that’s not where I am going with this.
Thanksgiving begins the Christmas Season for many people. Whether you celebrate Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanza, the hectic end-of-the-year festivals begin now and, of course, we should all be filled with the wonder and glee of the season.
Except often we aren’t. The season brings expectations we can’t meet and memories we cannot escape and challenges that seem never to end. It is a season when families should forget the difficulties and squabbles of the past and toast one another around a table full of joy and calories…when tryptophan and football rule the afternoon.
That is what should happen but Hallmark does not write our holiday stories. No lost love from long ago will show up at our door and make everything right. Our jumbled lives will not fall into order for one glorious day. All will not be forgiven or forgotten and we will still feel like our inadequate selves.
So why, when the holidays come with so many disappointments and unmet expectations, do we persist? Why do we busy ourselves with wreaths and pumpkins and cornbread dressing? Why do we strive to get the gravy just right and the tablecloth gleaming white? Why do we set ourselves unrealistic goals we can never meet and why, oh why, do we eat candy corn?
I believe it is because we have the gift of hope. We can believe that while we cannot achieve perfection, we should do our very best. While we do not have all we dream of, we have much to be thankful for. I believe that Thanksgiving should be about forgiving…forgiving others for transgressions long past and forgiving ourselves for the things we regret doing and the things we feel we should have done.
Thanksgiving is the beginning of a season of re-birth. Whether you believe in the birth of a savior, the birth of a new year, or a personal re-birth, new things are in order. I have friends who begin, about the middle of October, to yearn for the sparkle of Christmas lights and the smell of evergreen. With child-like hearts they begin looking through ornaments remembering where this one came from and how another hung on a family tree from long ago. Out of that battered cardboard box come visions of joy and sadness, of times of innocence and times overshadowed by loss.
For those folks, there are no decorator trees with just the right number of silver ornaments. For them ornaments have meaning and history and every year becomes a remembrance of things past and dreams relived.
I have a classmate and good friend who recently put up her tree. It was a week before Thanksgiving and I sent her a gently teasing e-mail about being an “early bird.” Her answer was unrepentant and straightforward. “Because it makes me happy.”
It is a great thing to know how to find our joy.
May you find your joy this Thanksgiving. And by the way, I am thankful for the many nice things you have said about these stories. Your kind words are part of my joy. And to my friend Devota…What a beautiful tree!
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