Busy? Thanksgiving to-do list getting you down? Thinking with longing of the grocery store’s “Let Us Make Thanksgiving Dinner” deal you didn’t order?
Stop. Just stop for a second and think with me:
Find your November issue of House Perfectly-Expensively-Over-the-Top-ly Beautiful. Place it on the floor. Take a deep breath. Now, stomp all over it. Give a little rebel yell.
There now — feel better? If you own any reading material by Martha Stewart, repeat times ten.
This is Real-Life Thanksgiving, the kind where the three year-old wakes up from his nap exactly 22 minutes after you put him down, the kind where you managed to get the only never-thaw turkey on the planet, the kind where somehow between the local market and your house you contrive to lose a bag containing expensive-ish deli meat and cheese and a can of pears for the cake you were in the middle of making when you realized you had no pears. Or, probably I’m the only one who did that this year.
This is Real-Life Thanksgiving, the kind where the food is all cream and brown because that’s the food your family loves.
Traditional bread stuffing has got to be the most un-photogenic food ever. Unless we’re talking about my mom’s cornbread dressing, which is even uglier. Delicious food is sometimes ugly. You have to choose. We always choose flavor.
This is Real-Life Thanksgiving, the kind where appliances that were chugging along perfectly happily quit in the middle of the most intense cooking of the year.
A couple of the guys working on the dishwasher while the meal is being cooked around them — real life, indeed.
This is Real-Life Thanksgiving, the kind where you find yourself without a standing order at the local florist and you rarely get further with Pinterest projects than that initial heady pin.
Let the shorter people decorate. DONE!
So you didn’t make the cream of turnip soup with cinnamon croutons served in mini-pumpkins. So you didn’t get around to brining the turkey. So you don’t have a roasting pan with a fancy rack because where would you store it the other 364 days of the year.
Can you manage a protein, a starch, a token healthy vegetable, and a sweet? Can someone swing by the market and get cranberry something? You have accepted all offers of help, haven’t you?
Then everything is fine. Just go with it. Because what’s important about Thanksgiving is to give thanks.
Just going with what we’ve got — off to the grandparents’ house!
And I want you to be able to give thanks, today, the day before Tday, too.
Give thanks if you have loved ones.
I never want to take her for granted.
Give thanks if you have shelter and food.
Please, God, let me keep remembering, “These are the good old days.”
Give thanks. In everything, give thanks.
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