…there was the Thanksgiving when the cat caught fire. The table was set– beautifully I might add– for twelve, with all the attendant plates and silverware and crystal. I even brought out my great grandmother’s salt bowls with their tiny, tiny silver spoons.
One of the kids lights the candles. The rest of us gather in the kitchen or the dining room, waiting for the turkey to finish its twenty-minute ‘rest’. Someone looks in on the table, oohs, and aahs, and then really AAGHS!!! when they realize Wookie, the twenty-one-year-old Persian fur ball, is gloriously aflame.
He does not seem to notice. Linen napkins– real ones, freshly starched and ironed– are whipped out, and the flames are doused. The smell of burnt fur lingered, and Wookie went on to live another two years. He was not invited back, however.
***
… there was the Thanksgiving, also hosted by Yours Truly, when the brother, the sister, and the mother were all home on college break (the mother had gone back to get her Bachelor’s at age 50. Very proud of mumsy). Pre-dinner, again while the turkey was ‘resting’ (I am beginning to think this is when the turkey is at its most vulnerable), our cat decides to camouflage the bird, covering the entire thing with her massive body. Lo, it almost worked, because for a brief moment we were all like, ‘Where’d the turkey go?’, and then one of us picked up the cat.
Ever tried to de-fur a cooked bird?
That same Thanksgiving, napping bodies littered the living room. I was in the kitchen, cleaning up, and my mother begins to yell, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’. She had been taking yoga classes at college and, unbeknownst to us, had learned to stand on her head.
Those in the family who were roused from their tryptophan-induced mental fogs were sure it was they who were upside-down. Massive hilarity ensued. We never saw mom upside-down again, but the story lives on.
***
… there were all those Thanksgivings at our home in Massachusetts when the boys were growing up and there was always room for one more relative or friend needing a seat at a friendly table. Those were my favorite holiday meals, especially when they were preceded by the free yoga class I would give at my yoga center.
During our five years in Mexico, we began celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving under the influence of our Canadian friends, the ones with the big house in the countryside that was a pain in the ass to get to. They deep-fried their birds in a homemade rig outdoors, and we ate, often two dozen of us ex-pats, around old tables loaded with our favorite, family-recipe, potluck side dishes. Hummingbirds buzzed outside the windows, and dessert was accompanied by sorbet-colored sunsets.
***
… this year, we’re at yet another address, this one in the Pacific Northwest. Outside our windows, the ocean is gray, the mountains of the island across from ours are gray, and the low-hanging clouds are gray. All the grays are different shades, mind you, but the heat of Mexico is a distant memory, and the ofttimes snow-littered landscape of New England is, too.
This year, we had our celebratory dinner on Monday. There were no burning cats, no upside-down mothers, no coma-inducing desserts. But there was family, and it was good.
lazy liza 