Thanksgiving thoughts

When I was 20, about to turn 21, I worked at a dry cleaners. The day before Thanksgiving, Dad drove me to work. I usually drove myself, but he needed the car that day. I walked in, and the boss put a frozen turkey in my arms. It had to weigh twenty pounds. I had no idea what to do with the damn thing. Dad had already left, and the turkey was bigger than our employee fridge. So it sat on the floor and defrosted, surrounded by an ever-increasing puddle of condensation.

By the time Dad arrived, it had thawed through. Mom looked at it and decided we'd cook it instead of the smaller one she'd bought. (I don't remember what we did with the spare.) Because it was mine, she said I was going to cook it. I don't remember much beyond getting up early, being slightly freaked out by the innards inside the cavities, searching the exterior for feather remnants, and Mom looking satisfied that she wouldn't spend the whole day on her feet. She supervised and instructed, and she still has gravy duty a quarter of a century later, but I've been doing most of the work of turkey dinners ever since. That's the day she passed the torch to me.

Our family stuffing recipe is pretty simple. We don't put a lot of stuff in there like oysters, cornbread, sausage, or mushrooms. Just white(ish) bread, onions, celery, oil, turkey broth, salt, pepper, and a few herbs. (I throw fresh thyme and rosemary into the turkey broth when Mom isn't looking, though she doesn't like them much.) I've experimented with different kinds of bread over the years; I don't want one with a flavor that competes with the other stuff, and it can't dissolve into nothingness when I pour the oil-celery-onion mixture or some broth over it. I like baguettes from the chain supermarket down the street, but Mom (the traditionalist) prefers plain old Wonder bread. When it comes out of the bird, it's like magic has happened; it's SO good.

I get emails from Family Search, the LDS Church's website for family history. Last week, the one I got said I had an ancestor on the Mayflower. I hadn't been aware of this, so I clicked the link. Turns out I have twenty ancestors on the Mayflower. Most of them come to me via Dad, but Mom is a descendant, as well. Turns out they even have two in common; Dad is descended from a daughter of a married couple, and Mom is descended from a son of that same couple. They have ten generations in the middle, so it's not like it's serious inbreeding here. (Though Dad joked that this explains his children's defects. He put it a lot more rudely, of course; it's Dad.)

After learning this, I looked up the nation of Native Americans who helped the Mayflower settlers survive that winter: the Mashpee-Wampanoag Tribe. About eight percent of American residents are descended from Mayflower passengers. So on this Thanksgiving weekend, I honor and thank the Mashpee-Wampanoag Nation and their ancestors for the service they did.

Mom's at my sister-in-law's house again. I can't seem to get through to her how important it is that we stay isolated during a pandemic, and she can get very stroppy if I say I won't help her. Now she's stranded out there because SIL and her husband (#3; my brother was #2) have a cold, and she doesn't want to bring respiratory germs home to me and Dad. So Dad and I have been living as a pair of old bachelor roommates for the last week and a half. It'll be another week at least before she returns. She was supposed to return yesterday, but the cold derailed that plan. Dad and I had postponed the turkey dinner until Sunday so Mom could have some. We can't re-freeze the turkey, so we're going ahead. Turkey tomorrow. I started the broth this morning, and I'm about to do a hostile takeover of the kitchen for the next few hours: bake the cheesecake, put the baked beans in the crock pot, and ingredient prep for everything else.

Cooking is one of my greatest pleasures. It's an act of creation, it's experimentation, and it's the act of taking care of my family. Even if it's just Dad and me at the moment. (It's a pretty small turkey this year, and I'm making half-recipes for the sides.)

ADDENDUM, 7:30 pm the next day:

Some things didn't turn out the way I anticipated. The turkey was done an hour before I expected, so it sat out for a while before the gravy and potatoes were ready. It was still warm, though; I just left it on a cutting board with foil tented over it. Didn't mess with it while I worked on everything else.

I don't know what Dad's tastes were like before he met Mom (for obvious reasons), but his preferences have molded to Mom's family recipes over the last five decades. Whenever I make turkey, cheesecake, or anything else beyond the everyday, he always sighs happily and says the family traditions are safe for another generation. And tonight, he said this was the best turkey dinner he could recall having. I was already happily floating in a turkey coma, but now I'm doing so with a smile on my face. And he has washed most of the dishes, too, for which I am grateful. We won't finish cleanup until tomorrow, but we can function in the kitchen as it is right now, and that's good enough for me.

I decided to hold off on the beans until Mom comes home. We already have an abundance of food; there's no point in another side dish where there's just me and Dad.

Cheesecake later. I'm still a bit full, so it will be a small slice in about two hours. But it'll be a nice way to end the day.