BY MICHELE MILLER
It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is just days away I’m thinking as I peruse the weekly grocery sales flyer that’s landed in the driveway with my morning newspaper.
This is a highlight of my week. Making a shopping list. Checking it twice – maybe three times – since taking a quick jaunt back to the store because you forgot something isn’t a thing anymore.
Time loses value and we lose track in a world where daily rhythms are bound by a deadly pandemic that shows no sign of abating. Where an autocratic-leaning leader is desperately trying to overturn an election that has been over for….how long now? Where the local daily I used to work for is delivered just twice weekly, arriving on Sunday and Wednesday to bring a couple of guilty pleasures along with news of rising COVID-19 numbers and the latest, un-presidential antics.
The supermarket sales inserts. And Carolyn Hax’s advice column.
BOGOs are the best. So is Carolyn Hax’s helpful and sometimes blunt counsel on how to maneuver the toxicity of the holiday season. Maybe unclutch a grasp on long-held traditions that should evolve with time and the welcoming of new family members.
It was a “first” last year for me and the old man to fly to Michigan to celebrate Thanksgiving with the middle kid, her fiancé, the youngest, and a multi-generational menagerie of guests crowded around the table.
The turkey was brined in a new and unusual way following a recipe from the pages of Bon Appétit. I whipped up a batch of my mother’s traditional breaded stuffing. The daughters made pies together, complete with autumn leaf cutouts made in a flour-dusted kitchen flowing with easy conversation and the sarcastic quipping of our people.
It was fun. The kind of thing that made us think, “Let’s do this again.”
A couple of weeks prior, and a couple of months before COVID reared it’s ugly head, we hosted our first “Friendsgiving.” Friends, family and neighbors congregated in our home, melding conversations about how the kids are doing and such, with an array of potluck, familial “fixings.” Green bean casserole, mac and cheese, cornbread stuffing, way too many pies, and my son’s traditional offering of sweet potato casserole.
Friendsgiving was to be a new tradition we figured, a way to fill the empty nest for a day, and catch up with loved ones we don’t see often enough. We even marked a potential “Friendsgiving 2020” date on the calendar – November 14.
We turned that page. Now here we are. Home alone and really wanting to catch up.
It may be against our better nature and holiday traditions, but now is not the time to be opening our homes to others – even if the emergence of new vaccines hold out an end-of-the-tunnel, glimmer of hope.
With over 250,000 dead and bed shortages straining hospitals and staff over large swaths of this country, we are being asked by the CDC and other health providers and organizations to do our part.
Stay put.
Our Thanksgiving celebration will be a modest gathering held in the open air of the backyard patio; a familial table shared with my son, his wife and our two granddaughters who make up our “safe pod.”
It’s not what we planned when we started shuttering ourselves in this past March.
Even so, there is much there to give thanks for.
Food on the table. A roof overhead. An open air patio.
Essential workers.
And so we will count those blessings and more over a smaller turkey brined in a new-found tradition, a batch of my mom’s breaded stuffing, my son’s sweet potato casserole, and a virtual sit-down with the daughters and future son-in-law who live out-of-state, and cannot be at our table.
And perhaps when we bid a virtual adieu, we’ll come away better for the simple act of evolving with the times – for doing our part by offering a small sacrifice this Thanksgiving as a way to help keep others safe.
