I don't remember the first Thanksgiving I celebrated but it had to be the year I turned 13. We left England on November 5, Guy Fawkes night, sailed across the Atlantic in a big storm on the Queen Mary and arrived 5 days later and disembarked in NY. We stayed with my father's brother, Gunther, who had a house in Ozone Park, NY. It was a strange, tense time. No-one could sleep because the bed rooms were too hot. We didn't have central heating in the UK so our bedrooms were un-heated. The food was strange, the television was on a lot more than we were used to, we felt awkward and out-of-place and my mother cried every day. She resented everything about her German sister-in-law. The more Irene tried to help my mother the more insulted Iris felt. It was horrible. Undoubtedly it was Irene who cooked that first Thanksgiving turkey although I remember nothing about the day itself. By Christmas we were living in half of a rented duplex in South Ozone park. My mother roasted the Christmas bird which is when I learned that the bird Irene cooked was "dry". The tension between the two families was if anything even higher.
As a child I didn't enjoy Thanksgiving. It was all about eating which I found pretty boring, because it involved too much time and work for preparation, and created too many dirty dishes that I was expected to stick around to help clean up, and way, way too much tension for too little pay off; an over-full stomach. Tension, walking on egg shells, tip-toeing around waiting for someone to explode and start haranguing. Usually, no always, Mom. At least at Christmas, there were gifts, and decorations as well as tension.
When I had my own household and it was my turn to host Thanksgiving I realized I could diffuse some of that tension by inviting strangers to the table. My mother could usually be counted on to behave in front of strangers. So Thanksgiving found me actively seeking lonely widows, lost foreign students, visiting scientists, or people just too far from home to get there. I'd been in that situation myself and had been grateful to be rescued from dinner alone. It was a two-for-one, I kept my mother at bay and I got to feel noble about having real Thanksgiving spirit. We were the natives and it was necessary to find a few pilgrims.
Later still, I came to feel like Thanksgiving was truly *my* holiday. The Pilgrims, after all, were the original immigrants. They were celebrating having enough food to make it through the winter. And as immigrants we had much to be grateful for. We had not only survived that first bleak winter we had flourished and put down roots.
As the years added up I came to a further realization; it isn't even necessary to have turkey for Thanksgiving. It's big, it's heavy, it's hot and greasy and slippery and often it doesn't taste all that good. What the people want is everything else! All the yummy stuff, (starting with stuffing of course) that goes with the turkey. One year I made a turkey dinner according to Julia Child, with all the potatoes drenched in butter and a wine based gravy. My father didn't like it. He wanted my mother's giblet gravy. The year my parents went to my sister's house and it was just me, 2 kids and my spouse it occurred to me to ask. Hey what would you really like to eat? Macaroni cheese said my children. My husband's idea of food from home is idli samber, ( he's a South Indian from Madras). So that's what I made.
I've learned to be careful about expectations I create for myself of what I should do. If I'm not paying attention I end up as angry as my mother. So I pay attention, I ask questions, I try not to assume anything. And I often fail.
We are back to family tension time again. Only this time the source is my sister. She feels put upon and unappreciated. She kept her feelings to herself, just like Mom taught her to do, until she could stand it no more and exploded in the modern way. By e mail. The kind that scorch the in-box. I have my orders to take care of Mom for Thanksgiving. Mom doesn't travel and to be honest why would I bring a source of angst and misery into my home so we go to Mom and take her out for Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. I never thought I would be a restaurant dinner on a holiday kind of person. I've spent too long in service jobs to want to make others work on a holiday. But hey, you never know, maybe they need an excuse to get away from their family too!
As a child I didn't enjoy Thanksgiving. It was all about eating which I found pretty boring, because it involved too much time and work for preparation, and created too many dirty dishes that I was expected to stick around to help clean up, and way, way too much tension for too little pay off; an over-full stomach. Tension, walking on egg shells, tip-toeing around waiting for someone to explode and start haranguing. Usually, no always, Mom. At least at Christmas, there were gifts, and decorations as well as tension.
When I had my own household and it was my turn to host Thanksgiving I realized I could diffuse some of that tension by inviting strangers to the table. My mother could usually be counted on to behave in front of strangers. So Thanksgiving found me actively seeking lonely widows, lost foreign students, visiting scientists, or people just too far from home to get there. I'd been in that situation myself and had been grateful to be rescued from dinner alone. It was a two-for-one, I kept my mother at bay and I got to feel noble about having real Thanksgiving spirit. We were the natives and it was necessary to find a few pilgrims.
Later still, I came to feel like Thanksgiving was truly *my* holiday. The Pilgrims, after all, were the original immigrants. They were celebrating having enough food to make it through the winter. And as immigrants we had much to be grateful for. We had not only survived that first bleak winter we had flourished and put down roots.
As the years added up I came to a further realization; it isn't even necessary to have turkey for Thanksgiving. It's big, it's heavy, it's hot and greasy and slippery and often it doesn't taste all that good. What the people want is everything else! All the yummy stuff, (starting with stuffing of course) that goes with the turkey. One year I made a turkey dinner according to Julia Child, with all the potatoes drenched in butter and a wine based gravy. My father didn't like it. He wanted my mother's giblet gravy. The year my parents went to my sister's house and it was just me, 2 kids and my spouse it occurred to me to ask. Hey what would you really like to eat? Macaroni cheese said my children. My husband's idea of food from home is idli samber, ( he's a South Indian from Madras). So that's what I made.
I've learned to be careful about expectations I create for myself of what I should do. If I'm not paying attention I end up as angry as my mother. So I pay attention, I ask questions, I try not to assume anything. And I often fail.
We are back to family tension time again. Only this time the source is my sister. She feels put upon and unappreciated. She kept her feelings to herself, just like Mom taught her to do, until she could stand it no more and exploded in the modern way. By e mail. The kind that scorch the in-box. I have my orders to take care of Mom for Thanksgiving. Mom doesn't travel and to be honest why would I bring a source of angst and misery into my home so we go to Mom and take her out for Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. I never thought I would be a restaurant dinner on a holiday kind of person. I've spent too long in service jobs to want to make others work on a holiday. But hey, you never know, maybe they need an excuse to get away from their family too!
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