Today is our Thanksgiving. Like me, it’s a day late and a dollar short. At least this time it was deliberate. With the two oldest kids now married, we made the infamous “holiday shift”. You know the shift… the time when you need to yield to other family obligations and shift your holidays to other days so that everyone can get together, even if it’s not on “The Day.” In our world, it was a pretty easy shift to make. First, Darryl and I are an aunt and uncle. Even though I’ve hosted Thanksgiving for nearly 25 years and Darryl has hosted with me for 12 of those years, we are not the parents. They get – and always should – to be top priority. Secondly, well, the day is so much less important than the time spent together.
So, this year our Thanksgiving is today. Currently, the turkey is slow roasting in the oven and all of the sides are prepped. A few years ago when we had to replace our stove, we purchased a double-oven unit. Honestly, it’s the bomb when hosting Thanksgiving. No need to adjust times, take the turkey out, put it back in, make room around it, etc. Nope. Turkey stays in the lower oven and the sides bake in the top. Easy peasy. And with the sides prepped, the turkey roasting and the table set, all that is left to do is clean myself up and then finish cooking. Again, easy peasy.
What I’m really looking forward to I will get just a little later today: family gathered around. It will be too loud, too crazy, too messy and too wonderful. It will be exactly what most big family meals are: chaotic. And somewhere around 6 p.m. when the company has left, the dishes are done again and the house is quiet, I will have this additional set of memories to add to the cache in my memory bank.
And that’s the point of this post: real life is not a picture perfect, Instagram-ready Thanksgiving. Real life is a Thanksgiving that is adjusted by 24 hours so that others who have better reasons to have everyone together on The Day get that opportunity. Real life is a kitchen where I’ve been cooking and cleaning for days that will be an absolute disaster zone in about four hours. Real life is spilled milk or wine. It’s an overcooked pumpkin pie, a too-spicy gumbo and a perfectly roasted turkey. Real life is using the good china and napkins, but not caring if the napkins get stained or a piece gets broken.
This year, we have worked harder than I think we fully appreciated to get to this meal. A few years ago, we undertook a renovation that would allow us to fully use our 10-foot dining table as well as to configure the house for better use of space. We redesigned the house to host big gatherings and make room for all. This will be big test. My preliminary assessment? There is room – finally – for everyone to move around the table. Only the poor sucker stuck sitting middle on the bench is going to be hemmed in and I’ll take that spot.
More recently, real life – and work – has been demanding for both of us. With extra hours worked and travel schedules strained, getting the final “pre-Thanksgiving” project done to get the house cleaned and decorated prior to today was a challenge. Again, real life. What I had imagined was that beginning Wednesday early evening, we would be celebrating a long few days off. Instead, it was busy with cooking, cleaning, prepping, and baking.
Still, we got here. And soon enough, the work will be done and the celebration had. When company leaves and the house is cleaned up, we will still have a weekend without obligations. A trip to get our Christmas tree mixed in with a load of laundry or two and a whole host of leftovers and again you get the picture: real life. This is not a Hallmark movie, a photo Christmas card or the ending to a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Nope.
But I’ll take it.
And I am ever so grateful for it.
The Yuppie Homesteader 