turkey plate
Thanksgiving is my jam. Not because of pilgrims or cultural traditions, clearly, because of The Feast. All hail a food holiday where the only gifts brought are summarily ingested and there are no hard and fast rules other than pulling up to a meal, throwing a crisp high five to the universe in gratitude, and breaking bread with the gathered.
For me and my clutch, it’s also a bit of a beacon. In the bad dark days of a bad marriage, The Feast was nearly sunk. But we reclaimed it, and we reclaimed it hard. With intent. And now it’s mine. In my patched together modern family full of halves and steps and singles and the bound, this one holiday is mine.
And man, do we dance. It’s never the same menu and it's months of Google doc planning and recipe sharing in the making. Adult-sized children with knife skills has made all the difference. Leeks are being chopped over here, while sweet potatoes get hasselbacked over there. Someone who is not me is ironing napkins while a tag-along friend is reading the hipster carrots recipe, which I’ve just given them dominion over. There is a serious endeavor to construct a SPAM log cabin as an appetizer. At some point, someone tries to make the underager do a shot of Fireball, though he never has. We go out back for the Gays with Guns Shooting Cocktail Hour, in which whomever can bb tag the egg in the tree is the winner of the wishbone. And at some point: dinner. For hours. Then pie. Then games. It truly, truly is my favorite day of the whole damn year.
So you can imagine how I’m feeling this year.
I think some of you can understand that feeling, that you would move hell and high water to have that kind of a day with your kids when you only see them a few times a year. I thought, with the first pack of rules, well there’s only 9 of us, under the limit! And households are families so even if four are coming from Chicago, that’s fine! And: my kids aren’t the problem, they are (mostly) highly paid millennials who follow rules and are safe! We’ll test, we’ll quarantine, we got this!
But as the days crept on and case counts crept up, we began to get twitchy. Then Chicago went into full lockdown. The Geologist-boy called me and said, “I was thinking about it. What if my roommates were super good and followed the rules, and really what if my whole block was really great and followed the rules and kept the virus out, and I was the one who brought it back from Minnesota. I’d feel like crap.” We hemmed and we hawed, and I started to devise alternate plans: Turkey over the fire-pit in the meadow, pies and sides with turkey sandwiches in the garage, just Gays with Guns and the biggest damn picnic table snack board you ever did see.
We hemmed and we hawed, dear reader, because mental health is not merely self-care chatter in our family and there is a real need to match eyeballs for a check-in from time to time. In fact, the eldest sibs (Elite Children is the name of our text feed) agreed that all of the anxiety roiled up with figuring out what to do was rather exhausting.
Then yesterday, Governor Coach Walz and MDH Commish Jan Malcolm made a plea to not have big gatherings, to keep your Feast to only those you live with, your immediate family. A beautiful nurse named Kelly Anaas talked about the stressed hospitals that were filling with people from all over the state, and begged us to not spend Thanksgiving with others, so that we don’t have to spend the New Year with her. Gut punch. I listened to her strained voice, and I understood that she would likely be working on Thanksgiving, putting herself in the direct path of deadly illness to help others. It would not be about gravy. I don't think we need to cast our healthcare workers as heroes, it's more important to see them as humans. I don't know how anyone could listen to her and then think: yeah, but not us.
I know people are sick of the pandemic, and wearing masks, and being told that things they count on don’t exist right now or (puke) “will look a little differently this year.” I see it. And I feel it.
But I had a picture in my mind of our big table, after the dinner. When we’re all a little drunk and you can clearly see the pink turkey on the bottom of all the plates. The candles have burned down, leaking wax onto the table runner, and like many of you, we go around and say what we are thankful for.
Has anyone ever honestly raised a glass and said: “I am the most thankful for me!”
Seems out of place, right? Normally it’s about gratitude for the others around you, for being at a shared meal. Sure, thankfulness for opportunity or joy, or maybe you’re grateful that you’ve achieved something you’ve been working for, or a grace learned. But centering yourself in that moment? It's not about honoring the self, but about the act of gratitude for the whole.
None of my family will be centering ourselves in the moment that is 2020. We are turning our act of gratitude outward. We will turn this year’s The Feast into the feast, and cook small in our respective homes, order takeout so that The Feast of 2021 can be of epic proportions with full attendance. As insane as this world is right now, I’m sure I will be equally lacerated for being a scold, and not being scoldy enough. I don’t intend to scream at you that you are slaughtering humans with an invitation, nor am I trying to sit in self-righteous piety for making my choice (both tactics also seem very self-centering in a way to me). All any of us can do, really, is be a beacon and amplify the light.
So let me hoist my most familiar lantern for you:
The simple fact is that the longer this all goes on, the more people and restaurants we lose. Order restaurant meal kits for Thanksgiving and consider ordering takeout all weekend long, restaurants will be missing out on those post-feast family gatherings too. The chance that we are about to go into indoor dining shut down is VERY LIKELY.
Do you need help planning a small feast? Send me a note to stephm@mspmag.com and I will do my best to find you the right takeout or send you a good recipe. I am thankful for you if you have read this far. The sooner we get things under control, the sooner we get back to having nice things again. Like Fireball, SPAM cabins, and egg shoots.
