Thanksgiving As Usual

Lovely, serene table...A hint at the chaos: Dad sautées, Mom and my boyfriend search for a platter, my aunt nibbles something, the dog scavenges.

“Ans, will you give me a hand with these dishes, please?” My mother’s voice, calling from the kitchen, inspires in me the same sense of automatic, and yet reluctant, cooperation. Yes, I was home for Thanksgiving, washing dishes in the kitchen that I know better than any other.

Except that when I imagined my happy, though brief, return home this Thanksgiving, I wasn’t thinking of dishwashing. Or tensions with my family members, or the looming pile of schoolwork that was growing everyday I was away. Instead, I envisioned my big, warm, sunny house, filled with delicious cooking smells, my eagerly waiting family, and (after a lovely walk in Rosedale Park) a fantastic meal. And all of those things were there! Except that they were all jumbled up with the annoying, humdrum aspects of family life, which I had somehow left out of my Thanksgiving dream.

When I got home the night before the holiday, my family was its usual disorganized self. Who wants what for dinner? Two people want Japanese take-out, two want to-go food from Whole Foods. Who’s driving where? And can someone get the shallots Mom forgot, as well as extra lemons? WHAT? Your recipe called for orange juice? That wasn’t on the list! It felt like any old weekend (plus a lot of extra food prep); I might just as well have gotten there via NJ Transit, rather than the eight-hour flight and much costlier ticket…

Like every other Thanksgiving, we ate about two hours later than planned, and everyone was pretty tired. The day after, also true to form, was the best: sunny, cool weather, a day off of work for my dad, and delicious leftovers for dinner, without any of the fuss! By that point, too, I had mostly come to terms with the fact that my four-day visit home wasn’t going to be so much more magical than Thanksgivings’ past. It got me thinking: after being away long enough, do we start to romanticize home in the same we once romanticized the lives awaiting us abroad? The trap seems the same: with so much distance from a place, one ends up ascribing to it certain traits (coziness, merriment, relaxation) and ignoring all the others. Paris is not only beautiful, historic, elegant, and fashionable: it is also sometimes inefficient, cold, conservative, and image-obsessed. So why should the place I come from be any different? It, too, has its pluses and minuses, and my visit home was a good reminder. Though it is my apartment in New York and not my family in New Jersey that I’ll be returning to in December, I know not to expect that life’s imperfections will have disappeared in my absence. Doesn’t change my giddy anticipation, though :o)

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