Okay–Halloween is over. The season of eating is officially upon us. I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday. I love turkey, and dressing, and gravy, and pie, and . . . you get the idea.
[Random aside: I don't really remember much about the first Thanksgiving after Lee's heart attack. I remember feeling a little overwhelmed by the idea of figuring out how to cook a meal that he'd eat, but that wouldn't make me miss butter. I remember thinking chestnuts might be useful (they're much lower in fat than other nuts), but then deciding I'd rather just do without nuts than have to eat those nasty things. But that's about it. Toby had surgery a couple of days before Thanksgiving to repair an inguinal hernia, and being five, and a slightly difficult child, he spent the whole week moaning and crying and generally refusing to recuperate. I don't remember that turkey day itself at all.]
Thanksgiving this year is on the 26th; that’s in three weeks and two days. So if you’re planning to cook a meal this year (not that you have to; personally, I’m a BIG fan of finding a fabulous restaurant that puts on a special do), it’s time to start getting your act together.
Now, before I launch into my spiel [watch this space for future spiel] about how this is a meal that requires a lot of careful thought and attention and hard work, let me just make this point: it’s no big deal. Really. I’m 42 years old, and I’ve discovered that Thanksgiving just keeps coming around again, every year. So if you don’t feel like making four desserts this year, or the budget won’t stretch to include turkey AND ham, or you’ve just got too much going on and don’t feel like making a fuss–don’t stress about it. It could be that the year you forgot to thaw the turkey and had to go out for Chinese food will be the one your children remember most fondly, anyway.
For some people, the holiday season carries a lot of emotional weight and baggage. Our society puts a lot of pressure on individuals to Be Happy, Love Your Whole Family, Cook the Perfect Meal, Pretend You’re in a Norman Rockwell Painting. I made up my mind years ago to get over all that garbage. No family–no meal–no day–is ever going to be perfect. I’ve had to accept: turkey that was still bleeding when we cut into it, frozen hotel pipes and a dude with a blow torch in our room at 3 am, baby pee all over my dress when I was far from a change of clothes, people who said they were coming then changed their minds at the last minute, being a guest in a house where no one ever offers me anything to drink, screaming children, bickering teenagers, dinner that was four hours later than scheduled and I was getting ready to eat my shoes, and guests at our house who just. wouldn’t. leave. I’ve gone to bed Thanksgiving night, one year or another, mad with just about everyone I know.
But over the years, I’ve just decided none of that matters. SOMETHING IS GOING TO GO WRONG. It’s not a crisis (the Bay of Pigs was a crisis; a change in dinner plans is not), it’s not a tragedy (the house burning down and killing 14 people would be a tragedy; a burnt turkey is not), and it won’t matter tomorrow (trust me–it won’t. You’ll have moved on to the next looming problem, or you’ll be out shopping).
I found that once I accepted that really, it’s just another day, with (hopefully) some particularly tasty leftovers, a lot of the pressure went away, and now I’m pretty much able to enjoy whatever the day brings (or doesn’t). Wherever we are, whatever we’re eating, Lee and I will be together, hanging out, making each other laugh, remembering to be grateful, and accepting the imperfections. That’s all that matters.