My family didn’t do Thanksgiving in the normal way. My friends’ families had huge family gatherings with large roasted turkeys and Norman Rockwell peeping in the window to capture the meal for posterity. It’s only been since I married Robby that I’ve been exposed to the turkey/football/leftover fest that everyone else grew up with.
My father would mumble something about it being senseless for Mom to have to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a meal that we would eat in minutes and then have another half day of cleaning up. Instead, when we were little, we’d pile into the motorhome and head someplace else. So, while most families have their Thanksgivings defined by who was still alive or whether the turkey was deep-fried or the Packers lost, ours are somewhat easily recalled because of the location. As in, “Oh! It was the year we ate turkey sandwiches by a hotel pool and ordered pizza” (while somewhere in Wisconsin, my husband as a small boy would whine about eating turkey leftovers).
Shortly before my sister deserted us for a ridiculously large family of in-laws and a turkey the size of our old Pinto, my parents flew the four of us to Vermont to ski. Our Thanksgiving meal was served in an old inn somewhere in the Green Mountains. The dishes were old– some of them early 19th century and not a single thing at the table seemed to match… The 7 Chimneys Inn (?) had all of the flues open apparently because there was one heck of a draft.
The next year, when I was a senior, my sister was a newlywed and my best friend Melle beat a hasty retreat from her family’s table to go skiing in Aspen with me and my parents. My Dad suffered dreadfully from altitude sickness so we cancelled our reservations at the Victorian house and made an impromptu trip to the market where we found “Thanksgiving in a box”– complete with small thawed turkey, potatoes, stuffing, pie and the rest of the usual suspects. Dad managed to make it through part of the meal before slipping back off to bed and Melle and I happily polished off the pie after a day of tree skiing.
During college three memorable trips stemmed from seemingly good ideas– “Let’s drive through Ohio!” (I had strep throat and could only eat the Amish restaurant’s mashed potatoes), “Let’s see what’s going on in Canada!” (not a heck of a lot, let me tell you but we did find a great Chinese restaurant near Walla Walla) and “Upstate New York will be pretty” (pretty what? boring? pretty dismally industrial? Though it did yield me a lovely afternoon spent in the library at Cornell U. looking up books on Lady Jane Grey).
When I was student teaching I went East with my parents to Virginia to see the Revolutionary War sites in my lesson plans. We had turkey in Colonial Williamsburg and visited Jamestown. Short of wearing a hat with a big buckle this was pretty darned traditional by my parent’s standards.
Our November honeymoon (to Alaska– but that’s another blog) brought us back to Michigan and work on the week before Thanksgiving. We were finally able to move into our apartment on that Thursday– Thanksgiving– but in the chaos no one had thought about the holiday. So we spent the bulk of the morning making trips from my old apartment in Southfield to our new one in Royal Oak when it dawned on us that none of us had thought to make arrangements for dinner. We made a few calls and the kind people at Mountain Jack’s looked the other way at our grubby sweat shirts and blue jeans and put us in a back room by ourselves. Robby’s parents, my parents, and the two of us. It was a nice way to start off our holidays.
And– just for the record– I have, for the last few years very much enjoyed this nonsense the rest of you have celebrated– both the small Thanksgiving meals at Robby’s parents and a larger, boisterous one at my mother’s with French guests that gleefully wanted it to be as Norman Rockwell-esque as possible. These last two years have been spent at the Lake at the Tuthills with Rob’s parents, the Wilkinsons, and my mother. It’s a low-key day of cooking and football and reading books and telling stories– a beautifully roasted bird and big bowls of all the right accompaniments… pitchers of gravy and (this year) Nat’s Hummers and Lady’s chocolates. The Tuthill cottage is blessed with the kindest of residents and the most wonderful fireplace on the winter lake. Rob and I agree that it is a wonderful way to spend the holiday– and that we hope there will be more such Novembers. But don’t knock the aroma of chlorine or the challenge of a last minute reservation in Colorado till you’ve tried it.
