Thursday, November 22, 2007

And a Happy Thanksgiving to All

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday--kinda like Christmas, without the expense, the hype, or the planning. For Christmas dinner, I invite only family. But Thanksgiving is for everyone--my sister from New York, my best friend of 30+ years, the Russian woman I work with who wants to experience an American Thanksgiving, one daughter's new boyfriend, one daughter's old boyfriend who still shows up every Thanksgiving for reasons no one understands, my grandkids who range from age 19 down to age 4, the neighbor who expected to fly to California but broke her leg and can't travel, and various and sundry others.

I buy and prepare the twenty-two pound turkey. I provide the TV set--two of them, actually. One for the football games and one for the playstation.

Everyone else brings the rest of the food, and my family can generally live on the leftovers for several days.

I catch up on the gossip, my adult children who are scattered up and down the coast come together and compare notes, the grandchildren play hide and seek all over over the house--and at least three people always volunteer to do dishes because "Grace did all that work making the turkey." Lemme tell ya--offering to do the turkey is the biggest scam around. It's the easiest part of a Thanksgiving dinner and barely qualifies as cooking.

For one glorious day, I'm not even thinking about money--I'm thinking how much I enjoy just hanging out with my friends, my family and all those other interesting people who happened to come by for dinner.

D'ya suppose that's why they call it Thanksgiving?

No comments: