Breaking Tradition

For much of my life, I have taken solace in the traditions of holidays. Actually, it wasn’t just solace – some traditions were so important to me that I actually thought I might not survive without them.

Once the gauntlet of snake-necked swan statues and barking, biting dogs ended (see Thanksgiving at Aunt Boo’s House, 11/13/10), Thanksgiving became a safe holiday. From the time I was 8 until my beloved mom’s final Thanksgiving in 2005, the holiday was always spent at my childhood home. The guest list was always the same except when death, divorce or birth intervened. As a child, two sets of my grandparents were always invited (I had three sets, but that’s another story), my aunt and uncle who would have to sneak out in the afternoon to go “do their chores” (they had a dairy farm), and a grand-aunt who gave very wet kisses (yuck). Later, as my sister and I grew up, my father left, spouses were added and subtracted as we married, divorced, and in the case of my sister, remarried. Children were born and there was a long stint of status quo until our children started adding boyfriends, fiancés, and husbands to the mix.  And no matter where we were living, when Thanksgiving arrived, my sister and I always traveled to our childhood home with our families for the long weekend. 

Routine was very important and so was the menu, which never changed. I usually arrived the day before, and spent much of the day helping my mom with preparations. That time together was quiet and sweet as we cut up bread for dressing, rolled out pie crusts, sliced apples, and chatted. Late in the day, we’d get out her Spode china, brought from England long ago by her cousin, and set the table. Thanksgiving morning, with parade sounds in the background, there was usually a panicked, “Didn’t I buy a bag to roast the turkey in?” and my mom would rout through her floor-to-ceiling cupboards in disbelief that she might have forgotten this most important element (and always find one buried someplace). 

The house gradually filled with the smells of turkey and dressing and the sounds of our children complaining of hunger until finally, it was time to carve the turkey – always my job. The yummiest bites were those I snuck ahead of time and passed around to anyone in the vicinity of me and my knife. At the dinner table, our children’s voices sped through, “God is great God is good Let us thank Him for our food Amen.” Later, my mother’s voice quietly intoned, “Bless, Oh Lord, these Thy gifts which we are about to receive” when our children grew too cool to say grace.

After dinner, we always lingered around the table. As a child, I loved listening to the grown-ups talk and tell jokes, and later turn the conversation toward Christmas.  As my sister and I moved into the middle generation, Thanksgiving night usually included a “Kmart run” for Christmas stocking shopping, which was fun beyond belief. We’d run around Kmart with our carts, buying things for each other, for our kids, spouses, mom and brother, warning “Don’t look!” if we had to pass each other or stop and ask a question.

Friday morning we’d often be up at the crack of dawn – yes, that would be us out at 4:30 a.m. and in line somewhere to buy our mother a computer or buy our kids some coveted gift. As we got older (and more tired) we moved our start time a couple hours later. But the tradition of sitting in a mall with my sister, my daughter, and my nieces not long after dawn, having coffee together and heading off in our various directions to shop till we dropped was special, and in our minds, compulsory. Friday night was always given to celebrating my brother’s and my youngest niece’s birthdays. Saturday was designated for more shopping – my sister and brother-in-law might sneak off to see his family, or occasionally to play cards with their friends, and in later years we always put my mom’s Christmas tree up and decorated it for her. Finally, Sunday morning, Thanksgiving was officially over. We’d pack up our cars and head south or east – until it was time to reconvene at Christmas.

Those traditions are sweet in my memory and I smile when I think of them. The usual and customary, however, came to a screeching halt during fall 2005 when our mom took a turn for the worse in her fight against ovarian cancer. She had been hospitalized for a few weeks at the end of October and came home to hospice care in mid-November of that year. Our celebration was vastly different, though it stands out as my most memorable Thanksgiving. My sister and I, exhausted from trips back and forth to care for mom, had no inclination to prepare, bake, or cook anything. We let our neighborhood supermarket do it. We set up card tables and chairs to eat our dinner in the living room where mom lay in a hospital bed. Although the rest of us remember the meal as forgettable, our mom, who had not had an appetite for days was alert, able to sit up in bed, eat some of it, and with a big smile, pronounce it “delicious.”  We looked at each other and gave thanks.

The following year our mom was gone, our childhood home was sold, and we convened at my sister’s for Thanksgiving. My sister and I flew solo for the first time in preparing Thanksgiving dinner and everyone lived to tell about it. A few laughs, a few tears, and without missing a beat, we began another tradition in another town, another state.

This year we are breaking with tradition again. My daughter and I are staying home for the first time ever. We want to see the Macy’s parade in our adopted home town. I want my brother, who loves parades, to experience it too. The parade passes the building where my daughter works. Her office features floor to ceiling windows on the 4^th floor overlooking Times Square. Her boss has given us permission to be there. We won’t be cold (or wet) and we won’t have to fight the crowds.

Although we were prepared to “go it alone” for Thanksgiving, some of our family will travel north to join us. While we feel honored, we know we would survive if they didn’t or couldn't come. That’s the important thing. But we will all look at each other next Thursday morning in a totally different setting – surviving, no – embracing another break with tradition and we will give thanks.