I joked yesterday that the theme for my family’s Thanksgiving meal this year is “Eat and GTFO” and while I am only sort of kidding, all indications point to me being back home, sitting on the couch in my pajamas with a glass of wine and Arrested Development streaming on Netflix by 4:30 in the afternoon.
I am torn between being relieved and wondering what the hell I am going to do with myself with all that empty time.
Besides watch all of AD, that is. Maybe I’ll move on to finishing Breaking Bad, too.
And basically every movie I haven’t seen since the girls were born.
My family gatherings used to be these all day shindigs. I remember Christmases when I was a kid and we’d fly into Michigan and it’d be a marathon, not a sprint, ending late in the night when all the adults were drinking cognac and playing Trivial Pursuit and the evening wasn’t over until my mom and my aunts would drunkenly sing “Sisters” from the movie White Christmas loudly in the kitchen. (You know the song, right? “Lord help the mister that comes between me and my sister and lord help the sister that comes between me and my man…”).
Thanksgiving, while never quite as prolonged an event usually ran much longer.
This year, it sounds like we’ll all eat and go our separate ways. Between my grandfather’s stroke (and that he is now in rehabilitation) and my sister and brother-in-law having twelve bajillion events to go to and my daughters not being around, well… it’s gonna be a low key day. I can’t even imagine we’ll turn the television on for football (Thanksgiving without the Lions game? Is that even done?). I can’t even think of what to bake because I don’t know if there will be anyone there who can eat dessert (diabetic family holidays, whee? I’m not gonna experiement with Stevia or Splenda or whatever the fake-sugar-du-jour is… because I like the real stuff).
[I’m kind of kidding here. You know I’m not too proud to make brownies that only I will eat.
Probably will eat the rest of them with my wine. While Netflix-ing.
LIKE A BOSS.
Or a sloth.]
It used to be that Thanksgiving would be an all-day gathering. I’d bring a book and curl up on my mom’s couch and I’d read and talk to family and I’d smell the rich aromas of turkey and stuffing filling the house and my stomach would grumble in delightful anticipation of one of my favorite meals of the year.
This year, I don’t imagine that I’ll linger. Maybe I’ll go for a run earlier. A good one. I’ll arrive late. We’ll all tumble out the door when dinner is done, off to separate corners of our little worlds, full of food and thanks, with an afternoon stretched wide open.
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