Forty-six years ago, the world as I know it ends.
My mother traveled Europe and Mexico alone in the 1940’s, built a career as an opera singer and voice coach, and gave everything to have one precious baby. Just as I am launching out in to the world at the tender age of 18, she disappears forever.
She is only 53. The stroke takes her away first – I am not allowed into her room while she is on life support. In another week, 500 people crowd in to the chapel for her memorial service. My boyfriend has to hold me up and steer me through the crowd. My father, drunk with whiskey and grief, gives a meandering soliloquy with one hand resting on her casket. It’s draped with a scarlet Spanish shawl and a single long-stemmed rose.
I return to college unable to read, write, or function. Thanksgiving arrives a few weeks later. The rest of the family cheerfully decides we should all go out to a big restaurant for dinner. I cannot eat a thing. My mother would have made all the pies, rolls and cranberry bread from scratch, roasted the turkey to perfection, filled it with her special stuffing, stirred up her famous gravy. Instead, we have pre-formed mounds of bland institutional food. I cannot bear its taste of loss.
From then on, every year I resolutely re-create her Thanksgiving dinner. I marry that sweet and steadfast boyfriend and, miraculously, we have a long and happy marriage. We raise our kids on the expectation of the most bountiful and creative feasts possible. They hand-letter place-setting nametags, chop vegetables, draw turkeys and fashion decorations. Somehow, the act of getting up at dawn each year to pull a raw turkey from the fridge and fill it with my own special stuffing is a great comfort to me. I love hefting its weight, washing it carefully, anointing its skin with butter and salt, nudging it in to the old battered roasting pan that was once hers. I love looking out over the back yard to the still-dark houses behind, feeling the day rise with the savory aromas that will surround us as we gather together.
Now that they have all grown to become active citizens of conscience, our three children and their partners have decided they are done with Thanksgiving. They have no use for the myth. The Pilgrim hats and Indian headbands they used to cut and paste in grade school are now offensive to them, and they can no longer bear to pass the pumpkin pie. They would far rather go to the Wampanoag Day of Mourning and absorb its lessons.
I totally understand, and yet, it leaves me at a loss again. This time of year, when green turns to brown and a chill laces the air, is deeply intertwined with my old grief. Memories of my mother’s food and its sudden disappearance along with her presence in my life, can only be allayed by my engaging in her ritual of feast making.
I don’t quite know what to do with myself over this. I respect my children’s perspective, but on Thanksgiving Day I know I will ache if I can’t get up early to perform my ritual of washing, chopping and filling. I will ache if I can’t clean the house, set the table, dress up a little. Going to a restaurant is totally out of the question. So perhaps I will just make a small turkey with some fixings and see if I can find a few friends who need a place to go for a home-made meal. I wonder if I should just forget the whole thing.
To me, Thanksgiving has nothing to do with Pilgrims, and everything to do with love.