Mostly Grateful

I'll get there

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because I love to cook for the people I love. I’ve been in charge of this production for a long time. I am, perhaps, a bit possessive of it. Annoying so, it may have been suggested. People can get very territorial about Thanksgiving, I hear.

I was raised to be the boss of Thanksgiving. In my junior year of high school, my mom went to work as a nurse’s aide so that my parents could afford to send me, their oldest child, to college. I’ve written before about how, not coincidentally, this was the same year that Mom decided my eighth-grade Home Ec class was preparation enough for me to become our family’s Thanksgiving chef.

All day, my mother was toiling away in the care of sick people at the hospital where she had given birth to all four of her children. The least I could do is produce the most important meal of the year so that she could come home to a hard-earned feast.

Or so the argument went, voiced mostly by my father whose union job guaranteed he would not have to lift so much as his pinky on Thanksgiving Day. He was years away from learning how to cook but full of advice on how I could be doing it better. It was great training for working with the editors who hated writing so much they became managers.

Nod thoughtfully. Say something like, “Thanks for that brilliant advice.” Watch him walk away. Carry on as planned.

It was this same year of high school that I became the family photographer. My father still had the best camera, but his focus was shifting from his three daughters to Shilo, the family dog, and nature. Lots of wagging tails and the pistils of dahlias the size of dinner plates. Oh, and his only son, Chuckie. Always Chuckie. And Mom, especially when she was standing with Chuckie.

Mom and Chuckie in picture #74 of 2,407 of the two of them at Thanksgiving.

Mom and Chuckie, from the six-album Christmas Series. I had just washed the dishes. And wiped the counters.

The reason I’m bringing this up—and yes, I do have a reason —is to explain, mostly to myself, why I have virtually no photos of me preparing Thanksgiving meals. For decades. It’s the plight of the family photographer, even in the age of the smart phone, in which even Aunt Wanda thinks she’s just one portrait setting away from the Pulitzer Prize.

If you’re always the one making photos, it apparently never occurs to family and friends to snap a shot of you screaming at the top of your lungs to scatter dogs and little ones as you single-handedly hoist the 40-pound bird from the smoking oven. I’ve saved many lives in my kitchen, every moment undocumented.

I may be getting off track here. What I mean to say is I love the first photo at the top of this essay because it is, indeed, a photo of me in my parents’ kitchen at Thanksgiving in 1985. I’d say I look free as a bird, but that feels a bit insensitive to the one being lifted out of the oven by my father.

My. Father.

Don’t tell me miracles don’t happen.

You may notice the cookie jar on top of the fridge. It was a gift during the wedding shower that took place after my parents had eloped. I have that cookie jar, but only recently found this picture from that shower. On the back, Mom dated it as having occurred weeks before their wedding day. My mother, the fiction writer. How could I not become a novelist?

This year, I have surrendered my power over Thanksgiving. Our four children are married, and this time they have had the nerve to prioritize other people they love. We’ll be together at Christmas. Life is full.

So, off we go to a large family of friends that has adopted us over the years. I will make my rum cake—I shared that recipe in the same essay last year—and walk into their home with as much gratitude as I can muster. That list is long, I am lucky to say.

The day after the election, a reader asked me, “What do we do now? Where is our safe place?”

I didn’t know the answer until I was asked.

We are the safe space, I wrote. You and I, and all the Americans who share our commitment to what is right and good—we will find the hope. First, we will grieve. Soon, in big and small ways, we will organize.

That was my response in the moment. It is my belief now, with brief interruptions. The events of this month, this year, have been a lot to take in, for our family and for more than 74 million voters in our country. We are allowed our shock, our despair, but let’s find a deadline for that.

I find myself returning to the image I have often used to describe my own struggles with grief. For me, grief is that monster banging at the door, and there’s only one way to get rid of it: Invite it in for as long as it takes for us to get bored with each other.

That monster and I have had our fights this month, but we are losing interest in each other. Why, just today I was sitting with it at the kitchen table and saw it looking past me, staring out the window. Not to be rude, but I look forward to showing it the door.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear friends and kind strangers. If this is hard week for you, may the day land gently.