I have a picture in my mind of the traditional Thanksgiving—crisp fall weather, turkey and stuffing, a table laid with china, a blur of extended family and a lifetime of shared memories. And though that picture lingers in my mind as someone’s tradition, it’s never been ours, and certainly will not be this year.
This Thanksgiving we’ll be on the beach, a thousand miles, vaguely, from our various homes, having assembled from even more various points—my dad has been in Europe for almost a month, and my brother and Joe left six weeks ago for a two-year sailing trip, and this is the first time we’re seeing them since their departure. Todd’s girlfriend came in from Los Angeles, and her parents will join us for the holiday. My husband, our son, my mother, and Joe’s girlfriend bring our number to ten.
Thanksgiving Day falls on my mom’s birthday this year, and she’s asked for one birthday wish: that no one cooks that day. She doesn’t want to spend her birthday in the kitchen worrying over a turkey when she could be playing on the beach with her grandson or listening to Todd’s stories of life at sea.
She knows that the Thanksgiving Day meal is not one you can do halfway, and that even if someone else (read: me) swears that she’ll take care of it entirely, it would overwhelm a lone cook and draw my mother inevitably into the kitchen, off the beach, and away from Henry and Todd.
We like her birthday wish, and we’re thinking of ordering the meal from the hotel down the street. We’ve done it before, at this hotel and at assorted hotels and grocery stores near our equally assorted Thanksgiving locations.
Here, when we pull up in the golf cart, they serve hot spiced cider in paper cups and load a turkey, etc., into the back of the cart in a cardboard box. It’s delightfully incongruous—the autumn taste of spiced cider in the hot salty air, the heavy, formal food in a cardboard box in a golf cart, and all of us in flip flops, sticking our fingers in the sweet potatoes as we unpack the boxes.
It is, I suppose, our own nod toward tradition. There’s no china, no bright chill in the air and no clattering kitchen drama. But it is always us, our little family and the friends who feel like family, and the various takeout containers that we spread along the kitchen counter, eating straight out of the boxes.
And wherever we’ve been, whatever we eat, whatever box it comes in or hands that prepare it, there’s always gratitude. We talk during the meal about thankfulness, to God and one another, for the richness of life and the gift of family, wherever and whenever we experience it.
My dad mentioned something this year about sushi instead, and I suspect that the collective fondness for stuffing and pumpkin pie will overrule his suggestion, but you never know. We may talk about gratitude this year over sashimi and spicy tuna, and quite possibly a new tradition will be born.
Shauna Niequist lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her husband Aaron and their son Henry. Her first book, "Cold Tangerines," is a collection of essays that celebrate everyday life.
