There's no tradition like NO Tradition

Thanksgiving gets an incredible amount of hype for being everyone's shot at a yearly Norman Rockwell moment.Coming from an unconventional family, and living a life that would make soap opera writers say "not bloody likely" I've had more unique Thanksgivings than I've had traditions.

As a kidlet, we did our Rockwell approximation, in my oddly assorted family. The ratio of 5 adults: 1 kid meant 5 opinions on how to not spoil me. Thanksgiving WAS however one of those "state occasions" where the folks would get all lahdidah and get out the etched crystal wineglasses and my uncle would pop the cork, my aunt would wrap the bottle, and we'd all get poured minuscule glasses of...Cold Duck. (be nice, this was the early 60s, suburbia had few wine snobs then)

As I got into the double digit age range, and more portable, we'd trek up to the shirt-tail cousin's place in Farmington Michigan, where their tract ranch house backed onto some lovely woods with plenty of room for kid exploration - a sand bank over a crick with a swing rope over it, trails to follow, secret places to discover. It's amusing to think of those squabbling siblings now - one's a bank lawyer, one a large animal vet, one an Engineering professor at a big name school, and one of some significant rank in the Air force - a very successful family, all in all.

The first Thanksgiving that hit me hard was 1976. I was working full time retail in a do it yourself bead counter at a May Company. A part of Thanksgiving I'd appreciated (and still do, in retrospect) is how magical it seemed to have stores go from 'normal' to 'full Christmas' overnight on Thanksgiving. I knew it was expected of me to be in late Wednesday and all day Friday (I don't think they were calling it "black Friday" back then). The harsh part of reality and the cruddyness of working retail came smashing together when my uncle, the head of the house, had a heart attack while bowling the Thursday before. Retail bosses were unwilling to reconcile "this IS immediate family" with the term "uncle" and quite unwilling to give me time off. Uncle Paul died on Thanksgiving morning. A shipment of beads from China had to be priced and set out on Friday. China had just reopened for trade and this was all a big deal then. I can still remember EXACTLY where that counter was and how much like a zombie I felt putting those incredible beads out. When I was done, I told 'em I had a funeral to help plan and let them decide if they wanted to fire me - I didn't care at that point.

Where I got wrapped up in a TOTALLY Rockwellian Thanksgiving was the year I was engaged to John. Both his parents came from a small farming town downstate & the expected thing was to go over the freeways and through the woods to Grandmother's house. It was a HUGE Victorian farmhouse with multiple porches, wood burning stoves built in fireplaces in the upstairs bedrooms, ceilings so high there were transoms over the doors, a bay window big enough for a grand piano, and a table big enough for the whole extended family - perhaps twenty folks there. The kitchen was the biggest I'd ever seen, obviously designed in an era of putting by large crops of produce and feeding large numbers of farm workers. I didn't join that family, but I've fond memories of temporarily being part of a more traditional family group.

The one I DID marry - our first Thanksgiving together was a wild weekend in California. He was in grad school at Cal Tech, I was in art school in Cleveland. I flew out there after Wednesday class. Knowing the logistics, I'd sewn myself two duffel bags I could wear bandolier style, and had my first view of LA freeways from the back of "Shadofax" his orange motorcycle. Thanksgiving day, we went farther down the coast to Orange county, where we dined with the family of a high school girlfriend of HIS. (He always did have a way of staying friends with exes parents). It was a merry weekend, culminating with a decision TO get married in the spring. I took the redeye back to Cleveland and went from the airport to the rapid, to University circle station, to the greenie bus to class.

Thanksgivings after that tended to be with his family, out in the country. His mother's cooking had deteriorated over the years. The time she tried to serve us mostly raw and unthawed on the inside turkey may well have been the key thing to turning my sister in law into a vegetarian.

Then he got sick... very. A summer and fall of battling cancer was a roller coaster of hope and horror. I'm not even sure particularly WHY but that year we decided to spend Thanksgiving day with my art ed professor and other students out at the "Pink Pig" (a farmhouse out in the country belonging to the university) we dined well, watched movie shorts (black and white "claymation" and such). Mark was well enough that we walked in the stubble fields of the farm there and talked. It stays sharp in the memory, for all the mellowness of the day.

The next year, he was gone. Thanksgiving was at my house, and an emotional struggle, trying to be family when the link that joined us was gone. I look at pictures and see the dark circles under the eyes. I also see the delight of my wee niece eating my ginger ice cream - the closest thing to a Thanksgiving tradition I have.

By 85 I was in Illinois, in grad school, and not coming back to Cleveland until Christmas break. An invite from my grad school mentor, Renie, was gladly accepted and I became acquainted with her husband David, the Rutabaga King. Now, I don't think I'd ever eaten a rutabaga before. I was told this would be required of me. Fair 'nuff, sez I, though I did wonder...y'see I'd been listening to WCLV Saturday Night (and/or Saturday Night on Wednesday Afternoon) which included a bit called Marginal Considerations written and performed by a very witty Jan Snow. Her pieces of observational humor had been compiled into a book "On the Non-Existence of Rutabagas and other Marginal Considerations". I was delighted to find out not only did rutabagas EXIST, but they were quite tasty mashed up with great lashings of butter. Admittedly, butter can even make snails SEEM edible... When I went home at Christmas, I arranged for a copy of Jan's book inscribed to David the Rutabaga king for him.

Ten years ago, sorrow and joy were all wrapped up in the (by then) usual invite to a friend's parents house. Ruth was engaged, and her mother in law to be had a bad-and short- health outlook, so three weeks before Thanksgiving, they decided that "the family was all going to be together, friends in town, let's get married while she can still enjoy it" They did, she did, and it was beautiful, small, and lasting. Thanksgiving at her parents has held that loving connotation ever since. Last night they gathered friends at a Cajun cafe to help them celebrate those ten years together and we drank to their good taste in picking each other.

But there are others I love, too. When my best friend Chuck was moving into his first house from a cosy nest of an apartment, with Thanksgiving being the final weekend, I agreed to come down and help. It was a peculiar bit of midwestern weirdness. He's no cook and had planned for a grocery store precooked turkey and stuffing, and relied on me to do the other stuff. I made some yeast rolls, turned the turkey carcass into soup stock and later made hand rolled noodles for the soup. Now helping a gay guy who is a clutterbug set up house is an interesting experience. I had to fight with him and lay down some rules:
- If a towel has holes or is shaggy on the ends IT IS A RAG. (this made the linen closet closer to manageable)
- No more than THREE candles on any one flat surface.
- you can NOT hang up EVERY framed thing you own.
Part of the frisson of the move was making the place an "our" place for them as a couple with VASTLY different tastes. His partner at the time was from a very rural area, and when his family came to Thanksgiving dinner it was the closest I've ever come to a nascarkmartredneckhillbilly world. Very educational. Some of the contrasts just puzzled me. While the brother thought nothing of slaughtering a pig and cutting up parts, making sausage and the like "how many pork chops do you want for your freezer?" he was completely astonished that someone would/could/should make turkey soup stock. We took some soup to their mother in the hospital the next day and I think it was the first home made soup she'd had in decades.

This year, due to the conflict of my being marginally sick and Ruth's dad being major sick and at risk from my coughing, I uninvited myself. I was fortunate enough to be invited to dine by a dance friend. It was a lovely meal with fun people followed by the mind candy of an Indiana Jones movie. Most peculiarly, neither invite had included turkey. The community meal on Saturday at church that's usually been turkey for November was... mac and cheese. I'm in turkey deficit and have decided to have a "Still Thankful" meal this week with some friends from church and the INCREDIBLY heavy turkey I hauled home from work that I'll have to start thawing tomorrow. I can't wait for February to make this one OR to have the room in my freezer.