Thanksgiving Thoughts
By: Tawnya Gibson
Tags: Thanksgiving, Tradition, Memoir, Creative Non Fiction, Creative Writing

(photography credit: Tawnya Gibson Photography)

Thanksgiving truly is my favorite holiday. Going from my parents’ home to the anything goes trying to find footing in between years of young adulthood and then settled into our married with kid traditions, each iteration brought its own type of joy.

This year, well. This year fits into a category of one (I’m hoping it’s just one!) all on its own.

This year instead of two Thanksgiving dinners; the first populated with smoked turkey and my brother in law’s melt in your mouth stuffing and pies lined like soldiers in front of the rock hearth in the kitchen and the fullest house with people moving in and out and talking, catching up and laughing and the second full of fruit salad in my mother’s handed down to me bowl, mashed potatoes and chips and veggies and dip and, again, pies lined on my sister’s kitchen bar waiting to eaten while we pour around the table playing games and stuffing ourselves silly. Each of these dinners happen a week apart. Each of these dinners are looked forward to, all year. Each of these dinners will be missed this year.

This year, all of the food for one dinner only will be cooked and prepped. But instead of piled high, it will be split and dropped off. My husband will spend the evening before making rolls and picking up our ordered pies from our favorite local bakery, an act that seemed more important than baking our favorites from scratch, this year. The day of will be full of assembly and sorting and a quick trip to a nearby town, running half the food into the home we normally slip into easily and often until we return from the drop off and find ourselves at home alone for the holiday. A first since those young adulthood finding our footing in between years. Those years seem long ago and far away and in the case of my kid, nonexistent in memories.

One of the blessings 2020 has left behind is time. We’ve been able to solidify familial bonds and the end of the tethers in my home have sprouted from the kitchen. We have a vague rule in our home that every one is in the kitchen at dinner time, helping. Helping cooking, helping serving, helping cleaning. Thanksgiving, this year, will simply mean a longer day of those tightening kitchen tethers.

I’ve been reading a lot about the 1918 pandemic. Similarities are hard to ignore. Masks, quarantines, stay at home orders. It turns out this time? It’s all very ‘everything old is new again’ after all. In Salt Lake, residents were under quarantine for Thanksgiving. According to the then Deseret Evening News, Thanksgiving 1918 was celebrated quietly and within dedicated households only. Which is exactly what we’re being asked of for Thanksgiving 2020. I won’t lie. It’s somehow comforting to know that the state has seen this situation before and will most likely see it again. We’re in a cycle that is definitely tough and I often wish I could speak to those who managed kids and loneliness and smaller meals that Thanksgiving a century ago. What were those homes doing? Were they reaching out, making sure the less fortunate were taken care of or their favorite bakery had an extra order to help through the uncertainty? Were they cooking beginning the day before in order to split meals with family that had to be separated, not by miles, but by virus? Were favorites steady and standard, potatoes heaped in hand me down bowls and pies lined by the hearth or was food curtailed and subdued, matching the mood of the world under threat?

I wonder, of course.

I wonder and I imagine, but my mind tends to wander and think a little more about the next year. Thanksgiving 1919. What was that year like? What were they grateful for, then? What showed up on tables and in kitchens when the world was once again spinning a little easier? When friends and family could once again meet, what was that year like? Did they take the lessons learned with them or fall easily back into traditions of the before times? What did they do to reach out in gratitude that year? What did they do to reach out to friends and to family? Did it feel extra? Was feeling heightened? Or had they moved on, like were wont to do when threat ends, when trouble eases, when trial is over. What did they do? What did they make? How did they gather?

All of this is on my mind this year, this year where two big dinners have fallen to one. Where pies are being outsourced, hoping it helps. Where traditions have altered and we’re home with far less people and laughter gathered around. We’ll be eating and feeling full. Playing games and giving thanks. But we’ll also be hoping for a little bit of easier air for next year.