Thanksgiving

In three days it will be Thanksgiving, and I am a whirling dervish of ridiculous plan making. This year we are a smaller group, only about 15 down from 30 last year, but I am still overwhelmed by all of the baking/decorating opportunities. For instance, I found a new recipe for sweet potato pecan pie that I am terribly excited about, and I am seriously considering recreating the table centrepieces from last year. You see, all you have to do is cover some long, plank tables with soft white linens, set your table with orange and chocolate brown accent pieces and fill scooped out pumpkins with mums. If you want it to be really special, line the table with tealights, fallen leaves and tiny golden acorns, setting a little chocolate turkey atop each plate. Then take a picture, because you will be the only one in the room to give a damn.
I don’t say this in bitterness. I’m glad that my family wants to devour my cooking so badly that they knock over my tealights and bite the heads off of my chocolate turkeys. I mean, naturally I don’t expect my sons to appreciate the magazine perfect setting in the fading autumn sunlight. But the adults, especially the women…really, I must profess a certain frustration at their lack of enthusiasm. But that’s what the holiday is all about, I suppose. The perfect picture in your head of what the day will bring, a sort of Cinematic sunlit moment with wine and Louis Armstrong and slowly savoured, rich food. And then your family shows up, your cousin in particular (I’m not naming any names - Katie) with a cat she ‘sort of’ ran over on the way “and I just couldn’t leave it on the road so I put the little thing in the car and brought it here.”
“You brought road kill to my house?”
“No! He’s not dead, but he’s so tiny that he crawled up in behind my dashboard and now he’s stuck there, meowing and hurt, and we have to get him out and bring him into the house!”
Ten minutes later, her children have locked themselves in my sons’ bedroom and I have to get a neighbour to scale the roof (which he does with surprising adeptness - hmm..), yet another cousin had arrived to take apart Katie’s car and retrieve the road kill, as her daughters wreak slow, silent havoc on the boys’ room, trashing it methodically with a skill I’m both appalled and impressed by. Then another cousin arrives (not naming - oh what the hell - Laura!) with two small children, an enormous pregnant tummy that needs immediate filling and no juice boxes. Are you kidding me? What the hell! That’s all I asked you to bring? Oh forget it!
And this is before my mother has touched a toe to my doorstep.
I like to plan family activities for Thanksgiving too, Rockwell-esque events like apple picking at a nearby farm and going on a hay ride to a pumpkin patch. I think I like these activities as much for their wardrobe possibilities for the kids as much as the ambience. Barn coat, check. Wellies, check. Disgruntled twelve year old, check and check. I don’t know why, because invariably I have chosen the wrong farm (‘it’s too bad - the guy down the road has better apples at half the price and a great hiking trail’) or given poor directions or embarrass everyone somehow. Like on last year’s hay ride, when there was a bona fide shepard at the farm and I pointed out - loudly and many, many times over - that he looked so much like a sheep.
“I didn’t know you had to look like a sheep to take care of them.”
“Do you think that’s a real beard, or just sheep’s wool taped to his face?”
“Do you think the shepard will catch me if I fall off the wagon? He looks quite spry.” While my captive audience laughed hysterically, failing to mention, of course, that Shepard was right behind me. They love that story - and every time I’m about to make another faux-pas these days someone will mutter “Shepard!” in my ear.
So there we are, hours away from The Event, and I’ve sequestered Road Kill away from my relatively healthy animals, cleaned the kid’s rooms and found activities for all the children, finished off my sweet potato casserole, basted the turkey, set the pies on the window sill to cool, done the dishes, set the table (and forgot to take a picture!) opened the wine - and She arrives. Mom. With her car overladen with food ‘just in case’ I forgot to make something or something didn’t work out, special stuffing wrapped in tin foil for my step dad ‘because he doesn’t really like anyone’s but mine’.
Okay, breathe. Dinner comes along - and I don’t remember a thing. I assume everyone enjoys their meal because all I can hear between the laughter is a lot of lip-smacking and yummy sounds, but it’s all like sawdust in my mouth. I wish I could taste my sweet-potato casserole or corn muffins or even the honey glazed carrots (I have a deplorable sweet tooth). It’s just that all I see is a mountain of planning and work eaten and gone in less than an hour.
But then - dinner is done. Everyone raves over my cornbread - a new addition - and asks for the recipe for my make-ahead mashed potatoes. I start a bonfire in the backyard, set up the muskoka chairs and wrap myself in a blanket as we all drink wine, cuddle the kids and tell ghost stories under the stars. The dishes are done - not even by me, thank you very much! - the house smells of turkey, pumpkin and happiness, and my aunt whispers to me that my Grandparents would be so proud of me for trying to hold the family together. Ah yes, now I remember. And am truly thankful.