Ghost of Thanksgivings Past

Last week I was driving with my daughter when we passed an obnoxiously large inflatable turkey in the neighbor’s front yard. “Mom, you could get one of those for our yard!” teased my daughter. “Except you don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving,” she added with a roll of her eyes. “It’s true, I don’t,” I retorted. “Why don’t you like Thanksgiving again?” she probed. I parked the car, turned to face the backseat, and said, “Okay, I’ll tell you.” My 9-year-old sighed heavily. “Here we go.” (If this were a 90’s sitcom, this would be the part where the picture starts to swirl and as I recount Thanksgivings past.)

When my husband and I first married, I was a retail manager for Hallmark. The cross that all retail workers had to bear was the dreaded Black Friday morning shift. For years my Thanksgiving night was cut short so I could get to bed and set my alarm for the 4am shift the next day. One year, we were driving to my in-law’s mid-morning. I was snacking on a banana as we headed down the freeway when all of a sudden my mouth felt fuzzy. I had been eating bananas my whole life, but recently I’d been noticing a strange after-taste. This time, that “after-taste” was growing stronger, so strong in fact that I was finding it difficult to swallow. My tongue and throat had begun to swell. Acting swiftly, my husband pulled over to the nearest drug store and ran in for some Benadryl. Thankfully, the medicine worked quickly and I lived to tell about it, (though I haven’t eaten a banana since). Pumped full of antihistamine and turkey, I spent the entirety of that Thanksgiving holiday laid flat out on my in-laws’ couch, barely conscious. Rising for my early morning shift at the mall the next day took a small miracle.

The following year, I was asked to bring dessert for our Thanksgiving gathering. I had become quite the baker and was excited to try out a new recipe I’d found in the latest Food Network magazine; a salted caramel apple pie. I knew it was going to be a hit. I was careful to follow every step precisely. I intently focused on perfecting the latticework of the pie dough. I even cut little leaves and pumpkins from the extra dough to adorn the top of the crust. It came out perfectly, just like the picture in the magazine. I set it on the counter to cool, and headed to bed, dreaming of the delighted expressions on my family’s face the next day as they got their taste of salted caramel perfection. Morning came and we were ready to head out the door. I grabbed a roll of aluminum foil to cover my pie, but as I drew near, it seemed like my pie was moving. I looked closer and realized what was happening. My pie, my beautifully flawless pie, was crawling with black ants. Every inch of it. I screamed in horror. I threw on some oven mitts and carried the entire masterpiece, pie plate and all, to the trash. There was no salvaging it. There was no backup pie. I was devastated. We stopped at one of the few open grocery stores on the way and grabbed the only dessert we could find; a cheap, lonely chocolate mousse pie that had been long forgotten in the back of the freezer section. I dragged my feet entering my mother-in-law’s kitchen. I dropped the frozen pie on the counter and hung my head low. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them what happened. The wound was too fresh.

Unfortunately, the ant-eaten apple pie was not my only Thanksgiving dessert failure. A few years later we were asked to bring dessert to a post-Thanksgiving gathering at my parent’s house. This time, I ordered a specialty “turkey cake” from Baskin Robbins, in an attempt to sidestep any potential disasters. After we’d eaten our meal, I ran out to pick up the cake. I couldn’t wait to see everyone’s reaction as I walked back in with an ice cream cake replica of a cooked turkey. When I arrived at Baskin Robbins, however, the clerk had a regretful expression on her face. “We had some trouble getting the drumstick pieces to adhere to the rest of the cake. The turkey isn’t finished yet.” I had a house full of waiting family. I had to come home with something, so just as I’d been forced to do before, I chose a sad-looking chocolate cake from the standing freezer; the only option left. Unbelievable.

Nearly every Thanksgiving has had some sort of unexpected malfunction. One year our garbage disposal broke minutes before the arrival of 15 guests. Another year my oven wouldn’t maintain its temperature as I was about to fill it with turkey and pie; we had to order pizza instead. Yet another year, my daughter came down with a dangerously high fever and was rushed to the ER with pneumonia and bronchitis on Thanksgiving night. That same year my Dad fell ill the week he and my Mom were supposed to fly out to visit for Thanksgiving, forcing them to cancel. But the straw that broke our back was Thanksgiving two years ago. My husband’s 30-year-old brother was placed in hospice after a long battle with cancer. My husband flew to California to be by his side while our kids and I stayed back to wait for news. Not only were we separated on Thanksgiving, but we were walking through deep, gut-wrenching grief. My brother-in-law met Jesus the day after Thanksgiving, 2018. We’d been unofficially skipping Thanksgiving for a while by then, but after that, we made it official. As for me and my house, we will boycott Thanksgiving.

Last year we left town and took our kids to an indoor water park resort. We pretended Thanksgiving didn’t exist, and it was perfect. Every year we get invitations from friends and family to join them for the holiday. We politely decline and assure them it’s not personal. We choose not to participate because we prefer to let the day pass. Let me assure you though, just because we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, does not mean we aren’t thankful.

I am grateful for a family to share holidays with, the quick effects of medicine, repair men working overtime on the holidays, open supermarkets, emergency room nurses who exercise no less compassion even when they’re away from their own families, pizza delivery workers, and especially the laughter that comes from hindsight. I can look back at every Thanksgiving disaster and learn something from it, just as Ebenezer Scrooge after he was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. I don’t recall all those experiences with bitterness, truly I don’t. If anything, losing my brother-in-law increased my gratitude all the more. I’m thankful for the relief he has from an earthly body that failed him. I am thankful for the hope of heaven, and the knowledge we will be reunited with him again. I am thankful my husband had the gift of being at his brother’s side during his final days on this earth. I am so very thankful for my relationship with my sister-in-law that has grown from the ashes of our grief. But the thing is, I don’t need to set aside a specific day of the year to express thankfulness. I don’t need to fill my home with people or slave away in the kitchen all day to know I’ve been blessed with far more than I deserve. The abundance of gifts God has bestowed on me and my family is not taken for granted. It’s just that wisdom from past experience tells me attempting a traditional Thanksgiving isn’t something I should do anymore. Can you blame me? That being said, I will never miss an opportunity to indulge in the only Thanksgiving food worth eating, pumpkin pie.

So go ahead and bend over backwards setting your Thanksgiving tables, choosing your outfit, roasting your turkeys, and whisking your gravy into submission. Spend your evening washing dishes and watching football until you pass out from exhaustion. I’ll be over here decorating my house for Christmas in my sweatpants and eating pumpkin pie straight out of the pan. I’ll have zero guilt and all the thankfulness my heart can hold.