On Finding Love And Laughter This Thanksgiving

As a kid, Thanksgiving meant driving from Denver to Colorado Springs to gather with my mom’s family or my dad’s brother’s family. I can’t remember whether we ever saw them both on the same day, but suppose we must have. 

Although I can’t tell you the year, I remember the day I didn’t eat turkey. My cousin said their dog had retrieved the bird from a recent hunting trip. She was proud, and all I could picture was the dog running to grab a bleeding turkey from the ground, its guts filled with shotgun. One minute, flying. The next, boom, carried by a drooling dog wagging his tail, waiting to hear “Who’s a good dog? You are!” Dropping the turkey on the ground.

Maybe it was a pheasant and not a turkey at all, which doesn’t really matter. Both, gross.

Thanksgiving

After my parent’s divorce, my brothers and I must have switched years, celebrating one with mom, the next with dad. Freshman year in college, Thanksgiving was spent at a friend’s home in San Francisco. The boy I was dating stopped by and, after dinner, led me to the porch to tell me he’d been seeing other people and that I should get checked for crabs. We never saw one another again, and I didn’t have crabs. I try to not think about that, too much.

Love And Laughter With Too Many Meals

In my mid-20’s, there were years when I ate three Thanksgiving meals. One at my boyfriend’s parent’s home, one with my dad, and one with my mom. Often, this meant spending hours in the car, driving around Denver, and sometimes to Colorado Springs, when my Grandma was alive. Always not quite hungry enough to eat at any of the homes, but too guilty to say “No thanks.”

“That can’t be all you’re having,” they’d say. “Look at all this food!” 

We’d play Taboo at one house, Pictionary at another. During those years, my then-boyfriend-soon-to-become-husband and I figured out we were allowed to skip it. Like, completely and totally not do Thanksgiving at all, swallowing side dishes throughout the day, never having a full plate of food, but plates full of guilt for never staying long enough in one home.

We started going to Mexico, where turkey wasn’t on the menu, and we could spend Thanksgiving getting wrinkled with tan on the beach.

Once my now-husband’s daughter moved in with us, and I had a baby, I wanted Thanksgiving to be perfect. The first year I tried to cook a turkey, the recipe said it’d take four hours. The timer went off, the turkey was still pink, and the mashed potatoes were hard.

We did find love and laughter though. I hope each of us will find love and laughter this Thanksgiving, too.

On Finding Love And Laughter This Thanksgiving

Since becoming a mom, I’ve wanted all of my son’s Thanksgivings to be memorable and perfect. But you know what? Each holiday we want to be perfect and stress about blend together in the end. Mishaps like raw turkey at 4 pm become hilarious stories told from table to table for years.

Maybe, even generations.

Years of being a kid driving back and forth between Denver and Colorado Springs remain in my memory bucket today. I don’t recall which meals were made to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other events.

I do remember playing a made-up game we named Blimey in the backyard of my grandparent’s house with my cousins. Laughing in the sun, snow, and in-between weather. Sleep-overs and family, and a great aunt who farted at the table after saying grace.

Once, we got stuck in a snowstorm, and the anticipation of whether we’d leave our car on the road and walk in a blizzard to a hotel was thrilling. As was huddling together in front of a fire once we made it home.

All of these memories mean that as Thanksgiving approaches, know that memorable holidays and perfect turkeys aren’t the point. The point is gathering and sharing funny stories about friends and relatives who’ve left people-shaped holes at our tables and in our lives.

It’s holding hands when we need to live beyond the sentences our very own people say that hurt. Because with family and life, there will always be moments to embrace, and ones to get through. Ones that hurt. Each is better when holding hands.

On Finding Love And Laughter This Thanksgiving

Our sons and daughters may not remember the year grandpa ignored them to watch football, but they will remember us being there. Holding hands. Making a joke about it later. They’ll remember the love and laughter at Thanksgiving, and the time, but not the year, that your turkey was pink at 4 pm.

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This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post, with the prompt “Thanksgiving.”