Thankful for a break from hosting Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving can be complicated.
Not the food, necessarily. After all, it’s pretty much the same,
year after year. Generally we Americans don’t like much variation
on the basics: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, some
kind of vegetable, maybe a salad if we’re feeling fancy, and
pumpkin pie with a generous dab of whipped cream.
Thankful for a break from hosting Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving can be complicated.
Not the food, necessarily. After all, it’s pretty much the same, year after year. Generally we Americans don’t like much variation on the basics: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, some kind of vegetable, maybe a salad if we’re feeling fancy, and pumpkin pie with a generous dab of whipped cream.
No, what gets complicated are the family arrangements.
We have hashed out a Thanksgiving plan for next week after much discussion, a few phone calls and negotiations.
I think my family is fairly typical when you’re talking about three generations, busy schedules, and a few other factors.
First off, location. There are basically five places where my family can have Thanksgiving: my house, my parents’ house, or the homes of my three brothers.
One brother lives in San Francisco; the rest of us all live around the Monterey Bay. So that brother is usually out of the running, given the parking situation and the tinyness of his house, which can hold maybe six people on a good day.
Oh, did I mention that there are a lot of us? When you count kids and significant others and all that. So there has to be room to cook and socialize, and then to sit down and eat.
That leaves four houses. I didn’t have a strong desire to host Thanksgiving – I’ve done it numerous times over the years – so my brother Cameron and girlfriend Kim stepped up. They recently bought a house and are eager to show it off.
Which is fine with the rest of us.
But it won’t be a full family gathering, which is difficult to pull off.
Two of my brothers are having their own Thanksgiving celebrations – Stewart in San Francisco, and Neil in Soquel. Neil’s wife Angel has a family about three times the size of ours, so they wisely opted to just host them and not take on the rest of us. They’ll have their hands full.
So this year it will be at Cam and Kim’s and will include me, my kids, Cam and Kim, Cam’s kids, and my parents. Which is plenty to go around the table.
As the years go by, it gets increasingly difficult to herd everyone together the way we could for previous holidays. The kids are growing up, and there are some teenagers in the mix, who would rather be anywhere else but where their families are.
Those who are married (or darn near) must make choices between his family and her family, and then there are little matters of parking and space, as well as who is emotionally equipped to handle a big holiday dinner.
Luckily, none of us have to work on Thanksgiving, which would make getting together even more fraught with complications. But some families, like those in medical professions or law enforcement, have to deal with that reality as well.
A turkey is not that hard to cook. The hardest part of Thanksgiving, for the cook, is making everything come out at approximately the same time. Even though I have made quite a few holiday meals, there are usually one or two details that get away from me.
I am infamous for forgetting the gravy until the last minute, and then whisking madly to get it ready while the turkey cools and the mashed potatoes congeal and everyone looks daggers in my direction.
So this year there will be someone new in the driver’s seat. And I’m glad.
For a while, I was the only one with a large enough table and space for the crowd. I had fun doing it – most of the time – but now I have no problem turning it over to someone else.
I’m looking forward to showing up with pies in hand and happy to help, but not responsible for the whole shebang.
And I’m truly thankful for that.
