The Thanksgiving column, 2022

Remembering a holiday 50 years gone by now — and the woman who made it happen. The November 2022 column in the Webster-Kirkwood Times. Read it here, or read it below.

Parsing the holiday

Tables in the hallway, Ottomans for chairs and Chinet paper plates.

My maternal grandmother — Nanny, as she was known to us — did whatever was needed to host a holiday for her family of 17, give or take an in-law or a distant cousin or two.

Through the eyes of us kids, it was magic. But it took years before I learned the complexity of the task before her — the colossal meal known as Thanksgiving dinner. To do so took the planning of a travel agent, the culinary skills of a top chef and the execution of an army … of one. 

And so I’m thinking of a Thanksgiving 50 years ago, celebrated in a two-bedroom home in Walnut Park. When I remember all she had to do to make it happen, I am in awe of my diminutive, Polish-American grandmother. 

Armed with a kitchen knife, a gas stove and a Nesco Electric Roaster, she pulled it off year after year, welcoming her family with a warm hug and a look that said, “Now get out of my kitchen.”

The work would start weeks before Thanksgiving: The list making. The laundering. The shopping. The freezing. The folding. The cleaning. The mopping. The polishing. The dusting.

And then a few days prior: The brining. The peeling. The chopping. The dicing. The baking. And then the morning of: The dressing. The roasting. The melting. The mashing. The stirring. The folding. The place setting. The candle lighting. The glass filling. The timing. The seating. The praying. The eating. The sharing. The laughing. The salt-and-pepper passing.

She was the last one to the table and the first one up, refilling a glass or replenishing an empty bowl. And after it was over, she’d step up to it again. The clearing. The scraping. The left-over saving. The washing. The scrubbing. The drying. The wiping. The sweeping. The sparkling.

That’s a lot of gerunds for one column, a lot of verbs acting as nouns. But that’s what Thanksgiving is: A lot of work for the lucky woman — or man — hosting it all. You know who you are.

Was it worth it? What I wouldn’t give to be able to ask her now, but I’m pretty sure I know the answer. Despite the sheer exhaustion she felt once the last of us left, she would say it was worth every singular action it took to pull off Thanksgiving.

And I know this: I never felt anything  but joy to be in her home, to be fed by her, to be sitting on an Ottoman in the hallway next to my cousins, eating turkey off a Chinet plate.

Nanny would turn around less than a month later and do it all over again at Christmas. She’d host St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate her husband’s Irish heritage. She’d have us at Easter to celebrate our faith. And on every birthday, anniversary, graduation or any given Sunday.

The smiling. The hugging. The laughing. The loving. We had the easy part.