Plans for Thanksgiving at my house snowballed last week, pretty much like snowballs do – fast and furious, going downhill quick. Then melted, much like they do in Hell.
The nicest part about The Cool Thing is that I’m now afforded a certain grace for my introverted, socially awkward behavior. Probably, it gives the impression There Is More To Me Than Meets The Eye, making my wallflowering and social non sequiturs mysterious and cool, instead of diagnostic.
Anyway, last week, a somewhat newish friend suggested Thanksgiving at my house. She was interested in avoiding her extended family, and knew my family had moved away. And she likes to throw parties. Perfect! This friend would help plan a meal, and come over early to cook together. Also, there were two recent divorcees we know who wanted to avoid their families this year — why not invite them too? New friend rallied: let’s go big and not go home.
Previously, my plans for Thanksgiving were maybe roasting a chicken, and surely opening some cranberry jelly (if only to hear the cool suck-suck-sloop birth of it from can to pink log on a plate). But I was quickly enthused.
When I called my mom to tell her about it, she got homesick. She knew all the other guests from when she lived here, she loves parties (she is my polar opposite socially), she loves to mother orphans, and she’s in Oklahoma without family. Sure! I said. Come on out! More’s the merrier!
I’ll buy tickets! She practically hung up on me to get going with that plan.
The next day, she called back, subdued. We can’t come for Thanksgiving. Your father doesn’t want to.
This isn’t such a gut punch, not after the talk I’d had with him before he’d left. But he loves my mom desperately, and it’s a shock he’d make her sad.
You know, I’d come by myself, she says in that quiet voice. But he’s gotten to the point where I can’t leave him alone. He can’t drive himself anymore.
It’s OK, Mom. As soon as I say it, I realize it’s actually the third time, a chant, under my breath. I can hear it coming – the fallout. Staving off signs of dementia requires routine and familiarity — knowing deep in your bones which cabinet the cups are stored in, or that extra toilet paper is in the second drawer next to the sink. If it’s not the same house, you get zero clues. He was driving when they left California in August. Fallout.
I can’t ask Little to watch him. She’d have to call in sick to her internship and stay home with him.
Mom, I say. It’s OK. You want us to come out there for Thanksgiving?
I’d love that. But wouldn’t it be a big hassle?
Three kids, on multiple planes, across country, Thanksgiving weekend? It’d be a huge pain in the ass. We’d still do it. But what I’m really thinking about is how we need to talk about how to protect her – she’s not going to last long isolated from everybody, if she can’t leave him even for the day. I know from my own childhood my mom doesn’t do well stuck at home in the role of caretaker.
No, she says quickly. We’ll come for Christmas. I’m just so sorry that I told you yes, and now we can’t. Her voice has that flat quality, beyond tears.
What’s happened Mom? Out here, in California, fallout feels like a legit thing, like the roof is weightlessly caving in, snowing down on me. Like across the country in Oklahoma, my dad is a battered old toy, and in the move, he’s been broken in some way that’s made him not-dad, and I’m just waiting to hear it.
He got lost in the airport, she says. We separated to use the restrooms, and he came out before I did, and he got lost.
It sits in the silence between us. She’s right. You can’t leave someone on their own like that, any more than you could leave a child. My father is becoming Benjamin Button.
The next day, the friend who rallied the Thanksgiving Extravaganza calls to tell me her family demands she attend their dinner – to eat a holiday meal with friends over family is an unforgivable insult. It’s OK, I say. But now I am on the hook for hosting a Thanksgiving for two recent divorcees, and I’ve never actually cooked a turkey.
I’m sending light and love, I hope being able to write these words have even minutely lifted the weight of what lies behind them.
Shit.
Thats all i got.
Oh, but id totally come cook a turkey with you.
Sending hugs to you and your mom and Little.
For the dinner- ask each person to bring something. Cook a few chickens and open a few cans of cranberries and order whatever else from the store. I have realized lately that what matters is the togetherness and the sitting down at one table. Unless your cool thing is that you are the next Martha Stewart or the founder of Pinterest. Then you have no excuse 😉
Mmmm. Youtube how-to for the turkey. Pot luck for the rest of it all, like Jessica says.
The rest is just water that I cannot swim in. Good luck, and do you need a new pair of googles?
Go to Honey Baked Ham place and pick up some ham and turkey that tastes like ham but is turkey.
Having a dad get sick-no matter the cause is awful. I wish I had uplifting words for you. All I have is the terrible fact that at the end, my dad dying was a relief. Probably for both of us. I’m sorry.
What Jessica said. OR, have your local grocery store do the cooking.
As for your parents, I am sorry for each heartbreak as it flutters around your family.
I am so sorry for the pain of this drawnout situation. The last thing you need, as a caretaker of your own family AND a caretaker of a caretaker, is to stress out over cooking a holiday meal for the first time. What everyone else said—buy it and/or pot luck. And if it’s more comfortable to have a buffet and sit around drinking wine and drawing outlines of hands on napkins to make turkeys, so be it. There is also always what I used to call “Pilgrim sandwiches” — turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and lettuce and onion on a roll with mayo.
Cheating method: get a turkey breast from the grocery store. They sell a combo white meat/dark meat bundle. Put in the crockpot with some chicken broth and seasoning.
If you want to cook a full turkey, use one of the oven bags and you pretty much can’t screw it up. Just make sure to thaw the turkey for at least 3 days. Season the turkey, flour the bag, and you’re done. It’s just meat.
p.s. I did not mean to be patronizing about “cooking a holiday meal for the first time.” I’ve been cooking them for 35 years—and I do enjoy cooking—but it’s STILL stressful! (Cooking is both chemistry and art, and many factors cannot be controlled.) That said, were we not separated by the continental United States in addition to other issues, I would come prepare you all a feast. (“Hand and finger” turkey drawings included!
Well. For Pete’s sake. I meant “goggles”…. not “googles.”
I cooked a turkey for the first time last year, and it was seriously no problem. I wondered afterward what all the fuss was about. And although I enjoy cooking the occasional meal, I’m certainly no cook. So don’t sweat the turkey.
The rest of it, I got nothing.
Is there any chance we will ever find out what the cool thing is? It turns out I’m not good at not knowing.
Holidays – they are Hard, especially when Things Are Changing. You’ll be in my thoughts.