A few shots from Thanksgiving, two days late.
Thanksgiving 2011
thanksgiving
Family and Food: Thanksgiving 2010
I should have some kind of keen observation about the nature of extended family and the good old southern Thanksgiving dinner.
For the former, I suppose one just has to look at the pictures: pockets of conversation springing up here and there; some males drifting in and out of the living room to check the progress of a given football game; women circled around a child.
Getting the extended family together was the goal of Thanksgiving on my father's side. I recall celebrations of twenty years ago when all the brothers and sisters, in-lawns, children, grandchildren, and a few guests got together and filled a small house to overflowing. There must have been forty or more people some years.
Now, we meet in a bigger house with a smaller family: all the cousins have grown and have families of their own. Some are even grandparents. They have their own gaggle to gather together Thanksgiving and Christmas: if we tried to bring together the same group today, there would be sixty or seventy, not just forty.
I wouldn't recognize half of them, and I wouldn't even know many. A stranger in one's own family. It would be like looking through photos of someone else's family reunion.
Still, even in that case, there would always be familiar faces.
The smaller group is better. No strangers. Just smiles and quiet conversation.
It all spills outside as the children play. Blizzards in the north and our family has Thanksgiving in shorts.
Now, just as my cousins and I played together years ago, our children play together. Uncles put them up trees, older cousins lead them into various adventures: it's all very familiar.
Playing in grandpa's back yard, exploring together. I have the sense I'm watching my own life.
Perhaps just looking at the pictures wouldn't suffice, though. Pictures are worth a thousand words only to those who know the narrative behind the shot. For others, they're just pictures of strangers.
Do the pictures of the food suffice, though? There are no exotic holiday-influenced dishes here. Turkey and dressing with thick, chunky giblet gravy; casseroles that are a variation on a cheese-and- theme; an enormous ham with a lottery of uneven slices; green beans, greens, and sweet tea. It is a southern meal in spades.
Pictures are enough, but I didn't take many pictures of food. It was, in a way, the very least important guest.
Additional pictures
Fourth Thursday
With a three-year old and no travel plans for Thanksgiving, we planned dinner around her nap. That gave us the whole morning to work around the house. As L grows, she's increasingly eager to help.
It's impossible to put beans into the coffee grinder or tea into the infuser without L calling, "I want to do it! I want to help!" When I stir something in the sauce pan, when K sweeps the kitchen, L is there, ready to help.
Indeed, if we don't let her help (either intentionally or accidentally), it sometimes leads to a mini-meltdown.
When we arrived at Nana and Papa's for turkey and the fixings, they had a surprise for L.
"We're tired of making a tent for her," Nana explained earlier in the week when I dropped by. It was, I would imagine, a well-established ritual: ottomans pushed together, with a blanket spread over it to create a small space for L to wallow in.
As planned, it kept the Girl busy while everyone helped out with the final stages of dinner.
Turkey with dressing and giblet gravy, with sides of rice, casserole, and cranberry sauce. What could be more American? Indeed, as I ate dinner, I remembered when, living with a host family in Poland, I was asked to create a typical American meal. I mentioned the Thanksgiving feast; I was relieved when told (this was 1996) that getting a whole turkey would be, at best, difficult.
After dinner was play time (until the turkey overwhelmed Papa and he began his post-dinner, in-seat nap).
It was the first Thanksgiving without any extended family at all. No traveling; no sleeping in strange beds; no absolute dread if it was a rainy day in South Carolina, requiring us all to stay inside with four generations of smokers. It was Thanksgiving without any of the negatives. It also lacked some of the positives that certainly accompany large family gatherings.
Yet, for one of the first Thanksgivings L will probably remember (at least for a few years), it was perfect. Especially the Mlenmorangie Papa brought out after dinner.
Thanksgiving Games
In the old days, my family and I went to visit Aunt L and Uncle N for Thanksgiving. It was always a traditional feast, with copious amounts of gibblet gravey poured over sliced turkey, with desserts and snacks through the rest of the afternoon and evening.
The guys might fall asleep in front of a football game sometime in the middle of the afternoon, but by five or six, everyone was sitting at the table, playing games. Dominoes, Uno, board games -- you name it. It was a time of family enjoying each other's company.
This Thanksgiving, we visited long-lost family. The difference was striking. The men set up a television in one room and watched football for the two or so hours they were there while the women watched a dog show.
When dinner was served, everyone loaded up their plates and sequestered themselves anew. After a couple of hours, the guests loaded up and took off, heading to the mountains for a vacation.
Thanksgiving 2006
Thanksgiving 2005
