T-Day!

Task 44, November 28 to December 5

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly” Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson - Station Manager, WKRP in Cincinnati

A personal Thanksgiving story from Paul.

I came of age in the ‘70s. I lived with my divorced mom and my granny in a two bedroom apartment in the affluent East side of Seattle, Washington. My mom was the building manager. My dad was mostly overseas, and we were basically penpals.

Thanksgiving day with mom and granny wasn’t exceptionally festive—morning was spent huddled in front of the television, watching the Macy Day Parade, followed by two or three hours of hemming and hawing about dinner, because there was not going to be any cooking done, which meant the choice was Swanson’s frozen dinners (a rubbery slice of turkey breast, slush-like mashed potatoes and green beans); or, as the years past, a Thanksgiving buffet at a local hotel restaurant.

And I was fine with it. Did I ever go visit my dad? No. My granny wouldn’t allow it—she was adamant, as only a granny can be, that there was no reason for me to meet my new stepmom, Marian.

So that was my Thanksgiving. Until it wasn’t. Granny passed in 1976, two days before Christmas, and with the immovable object, well, moved, I made overtures to my dad about flying to see him on Thanksgiving, but—what about mom? I couldn’t leave her alone in the apartment, staring at a Swanson dinner…

The solution was obvious, was it not? And it was Marian who concocted the plan: the four of us would dine together. And that’s what we did. The arrangement never bothered me, and Marian and my mom grew to not just tolerate it, but enjoy it. For my dad, discretion being the better part of valor, he wisely kept his opinions about dining with his two wives to himself.

And for the last 30+ years it has not only sufficed, but it has become a treasured tradition.

My father died in 1993, and the tradition carried on with a new foursome: me, my mom, Marian, and my life partner, Louise—a family of multiple generations, born from unlikely circumstances, but a family nonetheless.

There, of course, is always an exception to the rule—in this case a year that I was out of town, working as a flight attendant, in Midland Texas of all places, alone in the restaurant of the Elegante Hotel, staring down at an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, my only company was a Texas Sheriff inexplicably standing on guard in the lobby. My co-workers, the crew members, decided to go hungry rather than partake from seafood buffet in West Texas, and the pilot? He was also in his room, but not alone—he was cuddling with the other flight attendant, so I ate alone.

Thinking of, as I ate my prawns, Marian, Louise and mom…