I look forward to Thanksgiving every year as I envision the scene:
There is a beautifully set table and adorning it, is a simple and tasteful centerpiece. Chilled glasses of water and linen napkins rest beside the good china plates, which have little name cards placed on them. The Thanksgiving spread on the table is hot and ready for consumption.
My four beautiful children are sitting quietly with rosy, clean cheeks, white pressed shirts and satin dresses. The girls have bows in their hair. The boys are wearing ties. As I look at them, they are smiling sweetly with their little hands in their laps. Under the table, my feet are adorned in an adorable new pair of flats, which coordinate perfectly with the new dress and perfume I am wearing. I move a strand of hair away from my face––its’ perfect volume, shininess and seeming flawlessness is almost a bother. As I look at my husband, we exchange a rested look that speaks of love and gratitude.
We join hands with our family members and we say grace. We pass the food and there is quiet laughter and sharing. We take turns saying what we are grateful for and at their turn, my children say they are thankful for meaningful, wise things like their health, their family, freedom, and a wonderful life. And as the scene closes, I hear my youngest say, “God Bless us. God bless us every one.”
This is the scene I envision.
This is the scene that plays out:
The table is not yet set and has pieces of play dough caked in it from vane attempts to keep the children occupied as we wait for our “second try” turkey to finish cooking and my husband to get home from work. When the table is finally set, there is no fine china, because after the second salad plate is shattered, I decide to go with plastic plates in neon colors and a roll of paper towels. The green beans, stuffing, and mashed potatoes are cold, the salad and cranberry sauce are hot. The turkey is still frozen in the middle.
Four hours after we planned to eat, everyone is called to the table. I tell my son to go put pants on. I ask my daughter to take her finger out of her nose. Someone suggests that the smell lingering is not sweet potatoes, but the baby, evidently needing a diaper change. A fight breaks out as my boys argue over their seats. I notice that my daughters’ booger encrusted cheeks are rosy––from fever.
My feet are bare, my shirt and jeans are stained. My hair is damp with sweat and I smell like gravy and diaper cream. I look at my husband, still in his work close, simultaneously extracting a Thanksgiving popcorn kernel from our son’s nose, while glancing at the score of the football game. My other children are filling their plates with pepper from the shakers. As we hold hands to say grace, there are hollers as hands are squeezed too tightly. Four drinks are spilled across the table as we serve plates of cold food my children won’t eat because they’ve already feasted on peanut butter sandwiches and marshmallows, provided by well-meaning grandparents.
I’ve spent exactly six seconds seated when I hear a call from the bathroom down the hall, “Mooomm-yyyy, I need you to wipe my booootooommm.” As I make my way to tend to this plea for help, I cringe when I hear my other son announce to our dinner guests that this year he is thankful for two things–– tractors, and his penis.
There is quite a chasm between these two scenes–– my Norman Rockwell fantasy and my reality. However, there is a third scene, I realize, as I sit next to my mother and we share exhausted bites of humble pie.
The third scene is the one my mother sees:
A table set for a family––her family––loud, and messy and constantly evolving and growing through a flash of years of misshapen turkeys and stained tablecloths. There is an abundance of food––food made in a kitchen with her own grown children weaving in and out with their chatter, successes, failures and grown up lives.
There are healthy grandchildren, perfectly sticky, who adore her, and whose energy and refreshing honesty in all things bring laughter and light. And as she watches her own child, now a mother, and sees the beauty in her exhaustion and failed attempts at perfection––how she works to make Thanksgiving special for a family of her own––there is a clarity in the past, and an ability to see the beauty of her own years of Thanksgivings full of sweat, an absent husband, sick children, and ruined turkeys. Her child, now a mother, and sharing a piece of pie looks up and says, “Mom? ––How? –– How have you done it all of these years?” And as the scene closes, the child says, “Thank you.”
