Back in the pleistocene age, circa 1977, the Hubs and I were just married, living in a garden apartment (is that a universal term, I wonder, or local?), and I claimed Thanksgiving for my own.
My in-laws would have Christmas. My parents would have Passover, although they rarely, and then never, claimed it. Thanksgiving was the all-American holiday, the one I could reasonably claim to sponsor in my mixed-marriage household, when such terms still applied to such trivial things as Jewish-Catholic. I wanted to have a Norman Rockwell beautiful holiday. In those days, I still cooked, I read all the home magazines, I had all the accoutrements of the newly married: pots, pans, basting bulbs, nice dishes, stemware. I was psyched, man.
There would be eleven of us: the hubs and myself, my parents, his parents, his sister and fiance, my sister, the first husband (Satan J) and her adorable three year old, J1. Of course, her future offspring, J2 and J3, were there in that she looked like she was about five years pregnant and could barely move at the time.
My mother was just about to head into a bipolar downer and so was unavailable for help with recipes, serving tips, and all that. In fact, we had had Thanksgiving out in a restaurant with close family friends for about ten years by then. I don't really remember a Thanksgiving held in our own house in my childhood.
So I got cooking tips from all the old pros at work, and I got ready. I got cheesecloth to cover the turkey with, which I still do. I was, as they say, loaded for bear.
I discovered that morning, I think, that the oven in our apartment had two settings: off, and, like the oven in Mickey's house in DisneyWorld, VOLCANO HEAT! So once the oven was on, baby, did it get hot in there. By the time our guests arrived, we had every window open and we were wearing shorts and tank tops. And it was your typical New Jersey Thanksgiving weather, not this weird Indian summer-like thing that we're having now. If we stepped out onto the front porch, the sweat froze on our skin.
Anyway, so there we were, ten sweltering adults packed into an apartment that, as it turns out, should really have held about six, and one hyperactive and charming child, who carromed around the room from adult to adult like a pinball on speed. The turkey, as you might guess, was a little dry. Otherwise, there was only one other disaster to speak of: the pecan pie that my sister-in-law made never quite gelled. It was her first try at a pecan pie, and she was embarrased. I might point out that she is now one kick-ass pie maker, and actually had a business making and selling pecan pies a few years ago. Funny.
So that was it. Except that a couple of weeks later, my sister had her unexpected twins and then went into a coma and then woke up a week later with amnesia. Just like in a soap opera. I'm sure I've told this tale before.
It was a few years before all her memory came back, although most of it did, gradually. It came back from the beginning: first she remembered her childhood, and so on. She was sorry, though, that she ever did remember Satan J. Hehe.
Here's how we knew when it all came back. From time to time, my father would ask her if she remembered the Thanksgiving before the twins were born, since it was the last notable thing that had happened, only weeks before. She didn't. He would ask every few months, I guess, and then he forgot to keep asking. But once, it might even have been five years later, I was watching something on TV with the Sibs and there was something on about pecan pie.
Not thinking at all, except about pecan pie and how good it is, I asked somewhat absently "Didja ever have pecan pie?"
And she answered, just as absently, "Oh, only once, but it never gelled, remember? And it was so hot that day."
We looked at each other and looked and that's when we knew that it had all come back.
And that, and the fact that Thanksgiving is the Immigrants' Holiday, and I am the offspring of immigrants, as are we all as Americans, is the reason that I love Thanksgiving so much. What do we do for Thanksgiving now? Tomorrow.
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