The angst of a halfbaked holiday

I see so many ingredients for the making of my favorite holiday.

The calendar has turned to November.

The leaves are changing.

Here comes Thanksgiving. I should be giddy counting the days until I make my favorite foods and gather with family with friends.

And yet, despite all the signs that it’s time to be in full motion, I’ve got nothing planned.

By “no plans” I mean have yet to make it to the one store in town that carries the turkey-shaped butter.

Longtime Dear Readers will know there is not a more serious sign of inaction on my part.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. For years, no decades, I dreamed of having my own family. A big Thanksgiving gathering was part of that vision.

Even though Nov. 25 is fast coming upon us, I find my feet are stuck in holiday quicksand.

It feels like last year was actually easier. There we all were in full-on, pre-vaccine pandemic mode. No one was gathering, so there was no gathering to create; none to attend.

Here we are with what seems halfway out of the pandemic.

Thank goodness for vaccines, boosters and people making good, responsible choices.

But a big gathering where a bunch of people cram into our small house?

That once sounded cozy. Now it sounds COVID claustrophobic.

A small gathering of just our immediate family sounds like a lot of work for too small a crowd.

I’ve only been able to figure out what it doesn’t look like, not what it does.

The family is split on a lack of a grand plan.

One daughter looks at me with such disappointed expectations. “What do you mean we have no plans?”

The other daughter wants to stay away at school instead of traveling back and forth.

Husband thought we got out of the holiday business when we shipped the youngest one off to college.

“That’s over, Sweetheart,” he replied when I shared my lack of planning angst.

Over? My Thanksgiving grand plan was just getting started.

The vision has always been that our home will be the gathering place for grand Thanksgiving celebrations.

I’m wondering, Dear Reader, are your festive feet also frozen like deep-freeze turkey?

I have one tiny inkling that this holiday might somehow be salvaged.

It goes back to what was truly my first half-baked Thanksgiving.

My mother was famous for overcooking everything. The more dried out and flavorless, the better.

Then, there was that one year when I was in high school when our double oven broke right in the middle of preparing Thanksgiving dinner.

Much to my mother’s disgust, she served what she was convinced was raw food.

The rest of us had a different word for it.

We called it flavor.

It was the best Thanksgiving ever. Certainly, the most delicious.

This is how I’ve decided to package the holiday this year.

Could it be letting go of how something is supposed to look is actually the best recipe for success?