Let's hear about your most memorable Thanksgiving moment. It need not be wild or wacky, but something that has stayed with you over the years.
For me, it's simple: when my mother asked my uncle to pass the mashed potatoes he just put a huge scoop of potatoes in her hand. My mom then put the potatoes on her plate and the conversation picked up where it left off.
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I always have thanksgiving dinner at the house of my mom's best friend Howard and his wife Crystal. All of their friends come each year, including Mark and his eccentric, sassy wife Diane. A few years ago, Diane had quite a few glasses of wine at the table and began to toast everything. "To family!" she exclaimed. "To friends!" "To Native Americans!" It had been my mother's job to make the soup, and it was delicious. After her first sip, Diane rolled her eyes to the ceiling, tilted her head back, raised her glass, and cried in an absolutely wine-drenched voice, "To Rose and her heavenly soup!" Everybody cracked up.
Thanksgiving dinner is usually at my parent's friends house in Palo Alto. I am usually the only kid, so when I was little I would explore the house and go in places where I shouldn't. After dinner, we always take a walk around the nieghborhood to a local park. I got lost at the park and came home 10 minutes after everyone else had returned from the park. Finding my way home was a scary adventure in the dark, and I was so glad to finally find the house where I came from. That was definitely the most memorable Thanksgiving I have had.
Every Thanksgiving for the past several years, our family friends from Minnesota have visited us. One year, my sister and their youngest daughter were taking our dogs outside and surprised all of us by coming in the back door. They were breathing heavily and when we asked what had happened they said there was a huge spider in the garage that they couldn't walk past. We all through they were exaggerating but when we opened the door to our garage, there was a huge, brown, fuzzy wolf spider on the ground. Besides the spider itself, the thing I remember most from that night was the reaction of my great aunt. She was so scared of the spider that she hid her face, refused to open her eyes until my dad had taken the spider out of our yard, and screamed whenever anyone came near.
One year we went down to Los Angeles to have Thanksgiving dinner with my dad's side of the family. Visiting them was always a stressful experience because my dad, his brother, and their mother all have a weird little hate triangle thing going on, and something bad always ends up happening. This time, someone burned the turkey (no one ever took the blame), so the entire house was full of smoke and very thinly veiled anger. I remember being really cranky because it was seven thirty and we hadn't eaten yet, so I went around stealing cranberry sauce and other sides off the table. We celebrated at a restaurant for a few years after that.
We used to always have Thanksgiving at my grandma's house, but a few years ago she was sick so my family hosted it. We weren't quite sure how much food to make, having never planned the dinner for our family before, so we asked a few people to bring specific dishes. In addition, we had a twenty-three pound turkey.
Between traveling issues, illnesses, and overall confusion, only 10 people ended up at our Thanksgiving table. The excessive turkey would have been amusing enough. But when my uncle walked in with four large pies from his restaurant and placed them on the table with the three I had made earlier that day, we all started cracking up. Each person got almost a full pie to him/herself. What a delicious Thanksgiving.
My family has had thanksgiving a few times at a resort called Chaminade down in Santa Cruz. My most memorable moment occurred there, on the day that I learned of my grass allergy. I was rolling down a lush, green hill with my cousins when I suddenly felt an itch that escalated into sharp pain all over my legs. After a long bath, the pain subsided. I was relieved, and returned to Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I caught the flu later that night.
Thanksgiving is notorious for two things: drama, and fake interactions. None of my thanksgiving dinners have been host to either of these essential components, and thus have been limited only to thinly veiled contests in which the subject is whose cranberry sauce is better.
What we do have is a Thanksgiving rotation system that relies entirely on guilt tripping. No one hosts twice in a row, even though everybody helps to clean up. No one has to carve the turkey in their own house, for fear they might carve up the guests. No one freaks out with less than two hours to go before dinner.
A key violation of the third tenet of Thanksgiving occurred several years ago when it was discovered that there were walnuts in BOTH the vegetarian and meaty stuffings. Food allergies made this inconvenient, and a tantrum of epic proportions was inevitable: both chefs were told to include nuts, neither had considered allergies, and of course neither was responsible! But with twenty minutes before dinner, something had to be done.
There is something to be said for supermarkets being open on Thanksgiving.
I would get out of my house as much as I could last year. I had great friends and I could not spend enough time with them. It was common for my parents to get mad at me for not spending enough time at home. Maybe it is because I still do not know my months, but I never know when holidays are. Because I do not know when they are I usually accidentally plan something on the day of the holiday to soon be cancelled after realizing when I made plans for. I was so happy to be on thanksgiving break last year and I decided to celebrate by going swimming at my house in Marin. By the time I was finished and checked my phone, I had ten missed calls and five texts from my mom and dad. After reading the first text I realized that I was swimming in a pool two hours away from where my family was waiting on me to eat thanksgiving dinner. Looking back I somewhat regret showing up that night, either way, it wasn’t my fault they did not eat anything the whole day however it may or may not have been my fault that I made them wait an extra two more hours to eat.
This last Thanksgiving was definitely the most memorable one I've ever had. My crazy aunt who lives in Nevada came over unexpectedly and a lot of crazy things happened. At around 4 p.m., she said she was feeling bored and that she wanted to go to the casino. I don't know how it happened, but somehow she dragged me along with her. Yesterday was my first time stepping into a casino. Of course, because of the age limit, I couldn't actually do anything fun. So instead, I waited in the eating area for 40 minutes. The whole time, I got creepy and confused looks from a lot of adults. But then I realized that I could reciprocate these looks. I took out my phone and shamelessly started taking pictures of these addicts. That was a lot of fun.
My family is usually very dysfunctional. However, Thanksgiving seems to be the one time we manage to get along. This year I hoped for a miniature disaster so I could have something to write about for this blog post. My wish came true (unfortunately). The big Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh (niners vs. ravens) game was on. All the guys and I were gathered around the TV, while rest of the family was in the living room, eating appetizers. When dinner was ready, my mom made us turn off the game. My dad DVRed it so we wouldn’t miss anything. When dinner was over, we rushed back to the TV, only to realize that it had failed to record! There was much anger and confusion. Our only option was to go to the live game. Sadly, the niners were down 13 to 6, and ultimately lost the game 16 to 6…Happy Thanksgiving. The rest of the night was filled with pie and a giant hate-fest on Alex Smith.
My most memorable thanksgiving happened a couple of years ago. All of my cousins and family friends came over to my house as usual and everyone brought something to add to the potluck. This year, my aunt had brought a strawberry rhubarb pie. For all of the thanksgiving dinner, all she could talk about was this pie. She announced that she had made the crust from scratch and spent hours slaving over the strawberries and rhubarb making sure everything was just right. By the time it was time for dessert, she was practically bouncing out of her chair, so excited for everyone to try her fabulous pie. My cousin, my aunt's daughter, got up to bring the pie to the table, but on her way back, the pie slipped out of her hands. After the huge echoing spat that the pie made on the wooden floor, the only sound that could be heard was the wailing of my aunt.
The Thanksgiving when I was in third grade was the best Thanksgiving I'd ever had. There were at least nine of us munchkins running around and causing mayhem. That year, we made up the best game in the entire world. It was called Basement Baseball, and it was very simple. One of the boys, Jared, would act ridiculous and throw a medium sized ball at whoever was batting. We batted wit ha plastic stick. We had boxes of legos and a dollhouse as our bases. He would make it impossible to hit for he people he didn't like (his sisters), and easy to hit for people he did like (me). I remember clearly the look on my mom's face when she opened the door and asked how in the world we could be making so much noise. We all burst out laughing.
This thanksgiving was one of the most memorable that I've had. My family, along with my visiting grandmother, went over to a good family friend's house to eat. Everything was going well. All of us were watching football, and then we sat down to a really good meal. As the meal was winding down and it was time for desert, the hosts went down to their basement to grab the pumpkin pie. She suddenly ran back up to the house and exclaimed, "you'll never believe what happened. There is a huge spider (sorry Mary) right next to the pie." It was dead quiet, and my friend then exclaimed, "let me get by bb gun" to which we all started laughing. After much debate as to whether he could in fact shoot the spider, the other family's dad grabbed a huge glass container and proceeded to carry the spider out into the backyard. I was hesitant to eat the pie after that, but it still tasted really good.
When I was little I spent Thanksgivings in Cape Cod, Massachusetts with my aunt, uncle and cousins. Being on Cape Cod, the meals were usually seafood-themed. We would comb the beaches during low-tide for shellfish to eat, and we bought live lobsters from the local market. I always loved taking off their rubber-bands and setting them on the rug to fight. They never did, but nonetheless I called it the "Lobster Arena." I cried when my uncle put them in the boiling pot, and I can't remember whether I ate them or not.
In 2009 I spent thanksgiving dinner with my step moms side of the family in Modesto. Before everyone eats it is tradition for the family to gather in one big circle and hold hands. When gathered, we start off with a prayer and then everyone goes around and says what their thankful for. This year there was at least 38 people attending thanksgiving dinner. I held hands with my uncle and cousin( who is my age). During one of the most serious and touching thankful speeches given by a distant relative, my cousin started to tickle my hand. I was already trying to hold in my laughter, because I was standing next to my goofy cousin who always makes me laugh during serious situations, but once he began to tickle my hand I started to burst out with laughter. This was awkward. My uncle had just given a personal and touching thankful speech and here I was laughing. I instantly felt a tight squeeze on my right hand by my other uncle, and I began to shut up. Throughout the whole night I received glares from all of my family members, and I was served food last. Let I remind you I was eating with 38 other people.
Mayu, my aunt, and her best friend Ana are always in charge of cooking Thanksgiving dinner. They are equal parts gourmet and goofy. I was helping them put finishing touches on all the food before we sat down, and soon the only thing left was to dress the salad. They had made a delicious mint-dijon dressing, and it was sitting on a bowl on the counter. On her way over, Ana knocked over her glass of wine and it spilled perfectly into the bowl. Mayu came over, whisked the wine into the dressing, and poured it all over the salad. It tasted even better than before.
Three years ago, I spent Thanksgiving with my relatives in Palo Alto. Since this was my first time spending a holiday with them, I was extra polite, not even slightly grimacing when a giant plate of peas was brought out during dinner. My two 8-year-old cousins, on the other hand, made their distaste for these greens well known; they fed them to Patrick, the dog, and despite their best efforts to be discreet, this was noticed by everyone at the dinner table. This was a truly memorable moment for all of us seated -- and perhaps a bit more memorable was pretending that we weren't aware of this occurrence, if not to keep the conversation going, then to save Gabriel and Carmen from unnecessary embarrassment.
Since about fifth grade, a group of my Town School friends and I have have played in a Thanksgiving football game. In our freshman year of high school, I hadn't seen many of the guys in almost six months since school had ended. We all played the game of football, then walked up the hill past the field to my friend Stewart's house. We scavenged his house for money and took what we found to Laurel Village and ate gluttonous pre-Thanksgiving meals together. It was a great day of reconnecting.
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