A Turkey of a Day

This has never been my favorite holiday.  My earliest memories of Thanksgiving are of my grandmother chain-smoking Merits and swilling VO Manhattans while my brother and I tried not to bump into anything in her house that was jam-packed with breakable tchotchkes.  

As I got older and relatives passed on, Thanksgiving became a small holiday celebrated with only my immediate family: my parents, my brother, and me.  It felt very mass produced and unspecial: Butterball turkey, Pepperidge Farm stuffing, Ocean Spray canned cranberry sauce, Jolly Green Giant frozen corn, (unbranded) mashed potatoes, and Mrs. Smith's pumpkin pie.  By high school and college, my brother was jonesing to get out and meet up with his friends as soon as the meal was over, and I was irritated both that I felt obligated to stay at home and "celebrate" with the 'rents (even if that celebrating was just watching TV) and that I didn't have friends who were up to anything interesting.

As I got older still, I resented the imposition of Thanksgiving travel: spending time and money for a lame holiday non-celebration seemed silly.  I understood that Thanksgiving was supposed to be about expressing (or at least feeling gratitude), but mostly I was left feeling grateful that I got to leave my parents' house and get back to my real life by Sunday at the latest.

Then, with a nod to the inconvenience of traveling with children, my parents began to come to us (my brother or me) on alternate years.  Or so goes the theory.  Predictably and somewhat lamely, something always comes up at the last minute and my parents wind up not making the trip.  I found out they weren't coming earlier this week when my Spidey sense started tingling at the grocery store, and I called them to make sure they were still coming before I blew my food budget in their honor.

And so here we are.  Our Thanksgiving Day plans are the same: we'll dine with my in-laws tomorrow, just without my parents.  As there is some history of trip cancellations, I wasn't planning to tell The Boy or The Girl that their grandparents were coming until they were actually underway so they're not disappointed, but I am. 

I feel like I have so much to be thankful for, but I don't know how to channel that into a Thanksgiving Day celebration that is special and meaningful.  And I feel absolutely absurd that I am whining about this when there are people out there forging celebrations with so much less.

 

Comments

[Jk]

Hope you can have a good holiday despite this. I am sorry they aren't coming. It is disappointing.

[kathleen999]

I'm sorry they aren't coming.

We took over Thanksgiving as our holiday 20 years ago. My husband was tired of listening to his divorced parents bicker and so we started cooking with just us. Eventually that grew to a large group of people, then has dwindled to just a couple of people again now that we have kids. Apparently people don't like to come to a dinner with small children there, go figure.

Maybe someday we will get our large celebration back. I miss it. I hope yours is joyful and thankful.

[Sarah dreams and false alarms]

Ugh. Disappointing parents once again.

[andrea]

Many of my childhood Thanksgivings were reasonably good, in retrospect: gatherings of relatives who more or less enjoyed each other's company, abundant homemade food, etc. Which means the adult Thanksgivings suck so much more by comparison: a lot of the fun older people from those days have died, my parents divorced, all of us who were kids then have moved away from each other, and my in-laws have no sense of occasion or bones of festivity in their bodies. We had a quiet, dull and uncomfortable dinner at their house this year.

I think a lot of us just sort of muddle through holidays as adults, trying to make festive for the kiddos and trying not to expect too much for ourselves.

Next year, I am going to try to be a little more proactive and throw a party for my friends.

Anyway, it makes me feel better to know I'm not the only one who isn't full of warm happy feelings on Thanksgiving.