Thanksgiving has always been a wonderful holiday for me. Even the ones when-- with three small children born within 3 ½ years of each other—my military husband was deployed to some foreign country and I was too tired to cook. Those were the Thanksgivings when I’d bundle the children up and head to a one-stop-buffet-pleases-every-appetite restaurant like Country Buffet or Golden Corral. I’d be a tacky mom and place a holiday-sporting centerpiece in the middle of the table to make it feel like home.
With my dad being an only child, my childhood Thanksgivings were always spent with my mom’s side of the family. This was a very good thing, since there was always action (there were 29 cousins, after all) and all of my relatives could cook and bake like female Emeril Lagasses and French pastry chefs. Not bad for a bunch of Germans.
As for other Thanksgivings, I distinctively remember spending one with my husband’s brother and his wife in the L.A. area. My sister-in-law realized that her very frozen turkey which should have already been thawing for a couple of days wasn’t going to fit in the fridge. Rather than place it in cold water like I suggested, she decided to put it outside in the back yard to thaw after the rest of us had retired for the night. No one would know any better, she reasoned.
The next morning she awoke to find the entire turkey mauled and shredded across the entire yard. Whether it was a coyote or a dog, we’ll never know. What I do know is that we ended up having spaghetti for Thanksgiving.
One of my favorite Thanksgivings as an adult happened when we were newly married. Since we couldn’t be with family, we decided to invite one of my husband’s high school best friends and a single female soldier over for a home-cooked meal.
A few days before the dinner, the soldier called to say her mom would be able to fly in to visit. She asked if she could bring her to dinner, which pleased us.
The day arrived and, in my husband’s typical fashion, each person during the course of the meal had to answer a question that had been strategically placed where they were sitting.
The soldier had been asked what she was most thankful for and, with her mom in town, found it quick and easy to answer, “Family.”
The mother was then asked to tell us about one of her most memorable Thanksgivings. Her story was one that I have never forgotten, even though it has been almost 25 years!
She told of being a young Army Captain’s wife. She described how the officers’ wives had been asked to roast the turkeys for the enlisted soldiers’ Thanksgiving gathering. The mess hall was going to provide all of the pies and fixings, but thought it would be a nice touch to have the officers carve the birds and serve it to the soldiers.
Right when we were all ahhing and oohing and visualizing the wonderful occasion, the story took a turn for the worse.
She described how it was the first time she had ever roasted a turkey. She was standing beside her husband as he was carving and serving, when suddenly he began to pull newspaper from the bird’s innards. We remembered how giblets weren’t always packaged in plastic, and began hysterically laughing.
The soldiers lined up to be served her turkey started slowly moving over to other lines. One could only imagine how mortified she was, but somehow she was laughing to the point of tears now.
Our dinner would end fabulously. The high school friend had become an English teacher, so his question asked what his favorite poem was and whether he could quote it. He began to quote Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled.”
He began, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”
To our surprise and delight our other guests began to join in… “and sorry I could not travel both…”
We had no idea that the soldier’s dad was a big poetry buff and that he would insist that his wife and children memorize poems during their dinner times together. The joy on everyone’s face at the table was priceless.
Four stanzas of the poem later, the three of them ended:
“…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving no matter where you celebrate, who you celebrate it with, what you end up eating, or what humiliating things happen! Trust me, someday you’ll look back and smile at your turkey troubles.
