42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

I’ve gotten an invite for Thanksgiving breakfast with a co-worker and her in-laws. I’ve officially been adopted as the single lonely person in need of a meal.
Hey, who’s complaining?
But as we were e-mailing back and forth, and I was examining my family’s traditions, I started to think more and more about how much I’m going to miss my family’s Thanksgiving. That’s probably my favorite holiday. Christmas is great too, but Thanksgiving is all about food. No complications of how an atheist celebrates a Christian holiday, or diatribes about commercialization, and losing the spirit of Christmas when in fact the said ranter is not a Christian.

My mornings on Thanksgiving usually start with me either being told when to appear to work on stuffing and turkey, or getting an overly chipper phone call from my father, telling me to get over there.
We begin our morning banter, as my dad sings or makes breakfast and tells me to wake up.
We start making the stuffing, preheat the oven. The making of the stuffing is perhaps my most treasured part of the day. Dad and I have it down to an art that only improves with repetition.
It doesn’t really gain its flavor, its true potential until it has had time to sit for an hour or two, but we sneak bites anyway, burning our mouths on the hot stuffing in the only sanctioned taste test.
The next several hours turn into a game, in between basting the turkey and starting any other tasks.
One of us sneaks into the stuffing, sometimes deliberately trying to get caught.
Get out of there!
I wasn’t eating it! (mumbling through a full mouth)
The problem with sneaking bites of stuffing is that by the time dinner is actually served, there’s far less stuffing (though still enough for dinner and plenty of leftovers.) There’s also much less room in your stomach.
My favorite feast of the year has yet again been ruined by stuffing myself with stuffing.
We baste the turkey. It’s often my job to stuff the turkey, and baste it every time, though I usually have dad take the turkey out, because it’s heavy and I’m scared I’ll burn myself. Sometimes between bastings, we’ll watch the Macy’s parade, or I’ll go and go back to sleep in the spare room.
There’s the cranberry sauce that nobody but my stepmom likes. She’d make giblet gravy too, if we’d let her.
She usually makes a veggie tray, which we snack on when not eating stuffing. I love the green onions rolled in ham or turkey and cream cheese.
We peel the potatoes, often as a team. My stepmom has usually been preparing things the night before, but is also working on stuff at the last minute. I make the mashed potatoes, changing what might go in it this year. Cream cheese sounds good? We have some buttermilk this year.
Dad carves the turkey with an ancient electric carver, and I usually beg for skin. It’s so crispy. I try not to get some with fat.
Cats get their fair share too.
There’s never enough room on the table for the food, so we usually have a side table.
There’s always pumpkin pie. This has often been my brother’s job to make, but my stepmom has made some excellent variations herself. She makes a point of having another dessert too.

I’m sad to not be a part of this, this year. I know I’ll be able to make it home next year, for one of the holidays, anyway. But it won’t be quite the same. And neither will my vegetarian, scaled-down dinner by myself.

But I have no regrets, other than missing my family. I do like it here. I don’t second-guess my decision to move here.