Letters to the Editors: Thanksgiving Edition
We asked: "Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Will you be running to (or hiding from) your family? In 700 words or less, tell us why."
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and this year, I am actually going to miss it altogether. A good friend has invited me to go with her to Seoul and, despite the fact that I cannot speak or read a word of Korean, despite the possibility of snow, despite the fact that I hate jet lag and long plane rides, I am going.
Why? Well, I just retired from my job, like many others in this era of the Great Resignation, and so far, I have spent all my time helping out family members.
Don’t get me wrong—part of the reason I retired was to be available to spend more time with aging relatives and young adults who still need support. I just didn’t plan on spending more than eight hours a day doing it.
Since I gave notice in July, I have helped a daughter move, helped a daughter find a new job, nursed our old cat, sat in the ICU with my father-in-law, and gone back to the office for “just a few hours” of contract work.
The days haven’t felt like they did when I was working, but they haven’t felt like retirement either. Retirement is supposed to be a time of freedom, a time to do new things. I thought it was even supposed to be a little boring. So far, that has not been the case!
When my friend messaged me on Instagram about joining her in Seoul, my first thought was that I couldn’t possibly miss Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve never missed a holiday, never gone so far away from my husband. But it was my husband who encouraged me to reconsider. Why was I worried about not seeing family? I’ve done nothing but take care of my family since July.
He had a point.
Preparing for Thanksgiving has been different this year. It has involved ordering fleece pants, a parka, slip-on tennis shoes, and a SIM card for my phone. Instead of gathering the usual ingredients for pumpkin pie and grandma’s cranberry jello salad, I’ve been buying Clif bars and dried fruit, practicing rolling my socks and tee shirts into small balls, and deciding which English book I will carry on the plane.
I’ve been watching Korean shows on Netflix and ordered Korean money. It has been different—nerve-wracking at times. But as the trip approaches, it’s very exciting. I’ve studied the map of the Korean subway system and learned to say “thank you.” Just as good for brain plasticity as a daily crossword, right?
Meanwhile, I am grateful for my girlfriend who has filled our WhatsApp text stream with plans: staying at a school, volunteering in an orphanage, sleeping overnight in a temple, taking a ferry to Jeju Island. Going to Korea without knowing where I will be at any given time is, for me, an act of trust, which I’m happy to develop as I look to this last phase of my life. Who knows what other challenges lie ahead? The older I become, the less control I have in my life.
Knowing that I will be away, I am feeling grateful for my family in a new way. I am thankful that both daughters are responsible, that my husband will be surrounded by family, and that my family supports this crazy adventure. I’m grateful that I can travel, that we are no longer on lockdown, and that when I return, Christmas will be only a few weeks away.
I’ll miss having turkey, but I know that being away will make our Christmas feast even more delicious. Am I running to or hiding from my family this Thanksgiving? Strangely enough, a little of both.
-Vivian Clausing, San Francisco Bay Area
Since I first became a mama, I’ve relished the holidays with food, candlelight, good wines, and mounds of desserts. I’ve happily arranged food lists and menus. I’ve whipped up a thousand side dishes, heavy in creams and cheeses and meats and herbs. I spatchcocked and butterflied birds, slow-cooked and crisped them on the grill. All five of my children had something to say about our meal. All five favored dark meat, and thickly buttered whipped potatoes, cranberry jellies, adobe pepper sweet potatoes, endives and pomegranates, brussels sprouts, and chestnut sausage stuffing, cornbread. Oh, the gratitude.
But this marks the one-year anniversary of my mother’s passing, just four days shy of the Thanksgiving holiday last year. She was bound to assisted living, with around-the-clock helpers to fill in for the care her facility couldn’t perform. All day, she nestled on her heirloom sofa, her champion poodle cuddled close on her left hip, her oxygen cords woven through the entirety of her small apartment. The air was a constant death song, bubbling from what was left of her very old lungs.
The certificate of death had said it was COPD that got her. It wasn’t. It was Covid-19.
I begged my older sister to travel and join my family in our home and to bring her three boys as well. We needed to feel each other, see each other, hold one another. I begged her. It was not an easy ask. All four of them came in from different states. All four of them booked last-minute flights. We cried and cried, holding hands as we shared our gratitude, recent memories, and shock. Then we told jokes and laughed; we reminisced and drank champagne toasts.
Last Thanksgiving, a few days after our family guests had retreated to their respective homes, I returned to my mother’s apartment, over and over, to keep her close, to keep her alive, to smell her, smile with her, to see her bits and bobs, her objects, her life.
I noticed that she had laid out her outfit for our Thanksgiving meal a few days before she died. It was a black top and matching pants, far from the ordinary. The fabric of both was a silky nylon. It was the sort of fabric that laid on a body in a perpetual flow, as though a constant wind glided over her. It was regal. There were three buttons that lowered from the neckline’s collar, each made of abalone. The cuffs of the sleeves and legs were open, like small skirts at her wrists and ankles, like channels; everything about the dark ensemble was inky and melodious.
I found it on a small antique wooden stool, behind the door to her bedroom: the billowing outfit she had carefully prepared for our Thanksgiving holiday together. There she was. There I was. Thankful.
-Antonia Deignan, Indianapolis, Indiana