Even tradition needs periodic change...

It is Thanksgiving eve as I write this and for the first time in 18 years, I am not putting the finishing touches on a dining table set for guests. I’m not rolling silverware in napkins. I’m not chopping veggies for stuffing or deciding which secret ingredient will give the dish this year’s twist. I’m not washing stemware or counting out place settings. I’m not searching for candles or printing out place cards. For the first time in 18 years, I’ve abdicated the Thanksgiving Day hostess throne. Tonight, I am ready to become a guest. It is time for Thanksgiving Day to become someone else’s signature holiday.

I remember adopting the holiday as my own when my sons were toddlers. Transporting twins anyplace, let alone a holiday place, meant packing the car full with diapers, bottles, toys, a playpen, portable booster seats, and at least three sets of extra outfits each. Whew! What a chore that was. Cooking a turkey, stuffing, vegetables and pies for a dozen or more had to be easier than that, I thought at the time. And for the most part, it has been.

I recall with fondness the trepidation I felt the first year. I had gone to antique stores to buy extra dishes in preparation and I carefully planned out seating strategies for up to twenty people in a house without a dining room. Those first few years, I even mailed invitations. This was before email. Yikes, it was probably even before the internet!

I love to entertain and Thanksgiving allowed me the opportunity to welcome many new faces into our home. Through the years, we offered hospitality to neighbors whose own families were far away. We welcomed widows who might otherwise be alone. We welcomed boyfriends who have since moved on, boyfriends who are still boyfriends and boyfriends who are now husbands. I recall with fondness welcoming a foreign exchange student (a friend of my nephew), a young woman from Russia who celebrated her first, and likely her last, American Thanksgiving with us. Her day was not one I expect her to forget and I chuckle even now by how delighted she was when she saw our six-inch paper dessert plates that had been printed in fall colors with a turkey in the center. She had never seen a paper plate like it and she asked if she could take one with her. I gladly obliged.

Of course, some of our Thanksgiving meals were larger than others and some, more stressful to pull off. There were a few years when, two hours before guests were scheduled to arrive, like clockwork, I suffered a ten-minute-long mental breakdown. Hubby was right there to talk me off the building’s edge and the rest of the day played out like a well-rehearsed symphony.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention those Turkey Bowl football games that some years eclipsed my meal in both anticipation and enjoyment. Injuries notwithstanding, the memories on the field out back are just as precious as the ones that unfolded during gravy making, during dinner, or over cocktails and dessert. A lot of politics were discussed at my table but few, if any, arguments ever broke out. I’m grateful for polite company.

It’s Thanksgiving eve and though I did some baking and cooking today to prepare for my contribution to tomorrow’s meal, I feel much different than I have on this same night for the past 18 years or so, when I’d been preparing to welcome people into my home for the previous two weeks. My heart is lighter tonight. I have energy to spare. I feel free to do something that has nothing to do with tradition or food or flatware. I no longer have to be the one who has to pull it all together in sync. It may be nighttime, but really, it’s a new day and I’m going to make the most of it. I’m going dancing!

P.S. May God bless my beloved Matthew; for tomorrow (at least), he’s the new host.