You’ve all seen the TV commercials that show a happy family gathered around the table for Thanksgiving dinner. There’s always a cleverly crafted centerpiece on the table, an autumn-colored flower arrangement or an artlessly arranged basket of fruit and colorful leaves.
The china is Thanksgiving-themed and all the glassware matches. The cook comes in proudly bearing a tray with the Thanksgiving turkey, cooked to golden perfection. Everyone oohs and aahs and then the platters and plates are passed around in an orderly fashion. It’s the picture of perfect holiday bliss.
After almost 30 years of marriage and hosting Thanksgiving dinner for many of those years, I gave up trying to live up to that flawless image long ago. Here’s how the Black/Geoghan family Thanksgivings usually go.
I get up at the crack of dawn every Thanksgiving morning to wrestle with the cold, slippery and heavy turkey. The first challenge is removing the waxy little bag of weird-looking turkey parts that is frozen to the inside of the bird. I stick my arm up to my elbow into the empty cavity, yanking at the little bag and trying to keep the turkey from sliding off the counter onto my foot.
I grapple the turkey into its pan, slap some seasoning on it and stagger bowlegged to the oven, trying to avoid dropping the pan and having the turkey skitter into the living room.
We usually eat at around 3 p.m. I try to organize the dinner prep so that the turkey is out of the oven and cooling while I prepare the side dishes for the feast. This doesn’t ever work out. Chances are good that our family, arriving for dinner, will find me hovering around the open oven door holding a long fork, sweating, hair matted and sticking to my face, poking at the bird and muttering, “The juices aren’t clear yet? It’s been in there since 5 a.m.!”
‘I get up at the crack of dawn every Thanksgiving morning to wrestle with the cold, slippery and heavy turkey.’
I carve the turkey every year. I am not good at this, therefore the slices of meat are either too thick or too thin, stringy and oddly shaped. The whole mess is piled on a plate and slapped in the middle of the table, where the centerpiece should be.
Side dishes are shoved into aluminum pans, the ones you get at the dollar store on Olden Avenue. The table is so crowded with food that filling one’s plate requires one to stand up and balance a pan with one hand, while with the other hand, slap food onto one’s plate, and then exchange pans with the person next to you, who is juggling his or her own pan. Our dishes do match, but someone always gets stuck with the Philadelphia Eagles glass because we don’t have enough matching glassware.
One year the power went out on Thanksgiving Day. Because we have an electric stove, this was a huge problem. The half-raw turkey languished in the rapidly cooling oven while frantic Thanksgiving chefs around Ewing bombarded PSE&G with panic calls. Dinner was late that year, but it was not my fault.
Another year one of our burners caught fire. To this day I don’t know how that happened. I do however know that flour poured on a stove fire, while perhaps a good fire extinguisher, creates an odor so strong that it lingers for hours afterwards. Because I do not know how the fire started, it was not my fault.
Another year we put the sliced turkey, wrapped in foil, out on a table on the porch to cool before carving. Unfortunately, our dog hopped up on the table and helped herself to a turkey wing, forcing Donnie and George to chase her around the back yard in a cold, stinging rain to try and get the wing from her. We are fairly sure she had not touched the rest of the turkey.
It’s fair to say that the Black/Geoghan family Thanksgiving dinners are not picture-perfect, idyllic holiday celebrations. But it’s also fair to say that, while they may not be pretty, or classy or photogenic, our holidays are filled with gratitude for our many blessings, love, and yes, always laughter. I wish you and yours the same.
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