11/14/2007

WE'RE SMOKING ALL THE TIME OVER HERE

The turkey. And a bunch of salmon. Maybe a chicken .

What did you think I meant?

Thanksgiving is fast approaching. I like this holiday for a bunch of reasons. First for the most delicious single meal of the year. Oh, I will have other wonderful meals in the weeks and months to come, but none that are as anticipated and deliver so consistently on my high expectations.

Second, I like the name. I think that a national holiday intended to promote thankfulness is just so folksy and American. The French are not doing this. Brazilians are to busy shaking it in thongs on their beautiful beaches. But us, we're giving thanks for our ridiculously wonderful lives. Even when life is awful, it is still full of wonder and I'm really giving thanks for being able to see that. I know people who don't.

Third, I usually like the people I spend the day with. So there is that.

There is one really terrible Thanksgiving that stays in my mind. A fiasco that started when my maternal grandmother had a stroke in early November. My mom and her 4 sisters (Sherry, Sally, Sonia and Sandi - my mom is Susie) decided to go ahead and have a gathering but determined that it should be close to the hospital in case they needed to get there quickly. So my mom offered to do the turkey.

I should really just stop here. ANYONE who knows my mother knows that my mother doesn't cook. The tell-tale sign that my mother was clinically depressed was when she started baking. I'm not joking. She's better now. She has resumed her "Don't ask, don't tell" attitude toward the magic that turns ingredients into food. We are all happier.

Anyway, that fateful year my Aunt Sonia showed up with Jello that she just couldn't get to gel (she was also not much of a cook) and my father's hair and eyebrows burst into flame while he assisted my mother in basting the turkey and we all laughed that giddy/hysterical laugh of people who can't get a line on how they should feel or act. All except my mother because she was sobbing after nearly burning my father's face off. So, overall - not the best Thanksgiving on record.

This year should be better than that one. So I guess that would be my fourth reason.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

whoa! maybe not the best, but I'm guessing the most memorable.

Momo Fali said...

My favorite Thanksgiving memory was when my Dad put a record of Johnny Mathis singing the Lord's Prayer on and we all bowed our heads. Only when the music started it was actually Barbara Streisand and the record was on the wrong speed. (Am I showing my age talking about "records"?!)

Anonymous said...

I'm not a big holiday kinda girl.

I try to avoid them really...

But I am thankful that my daughter is growing and healthy and going to be a lawyer when she grows up.

I also love sweet potatoes. I could live on those alone.

Candy said...

I've always been more of a Christmas person. Thanksgiving seems just like a little blip in the way of it, when I am required to cook like a fiend for 5 minutes of eating, and then clean like a fiend for hours.

chicken said...

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday as well...we all sit around and remember days gone by, when I broke the lamp, or when my cousin pushed his brother down the laundry shoot, or when my uncle made us all poop behind the tree because there was no bathroom...the camping trips...the fun. My least favorite Thanksgiving is when 11 of us loaded up into a 10 passenger van to travel 13 hours. Swear to God I could have killed someone...