30 a.m. – A Thanksgiving letter to my mother

Dear Mom,

I’m already up, itching to start the turkey. But everyone here is still asleep and I know that as soon as I start banging pots around the whole house will be up. So for now I am enjoying a quiet cup of coffee in the pre-dawn stillness. I am upstairs in my office, which is my sanctuary, all my lists laying in a pile on the kitchen table. I will look at them later.

In point of fact, I’ve been making Thanksgiving dinner for 21 years today, if you count the crazy potlucks my friends used to do in college the weekend before the holiday, and I don’t really need the lists. They just comfort me. This year there won’t be Kraft dinner on the side – my old school pal Ron’s annual contribution – or chips and dip guiltily slipped into the mix by Doug, Dave or Pat. By the same token, Wanda’s amazing spaetzel from her mother’s recipe are probably being boiled up somewhere in Texas as we speak and Halston’s apple pie is sitting on a window sill in rural Missouri. No, today’s dinner is higher-minded, with sage and mint-stuffed roasted turkey made with herbs from my summer garden, dried and preserved just for today. Lucky’s homemade applesauce with cinammon and my cranberries with orange zest and red wine will fill the house with sweet smells, complemented by five homemade desserts from Michelle and 10 pounds each of mashed and sweet potatoes dutifully peeled by Lena and Emma and prepared by Beth. Mehrdad will bring his famous saffron rice with Wisconsin cranberries. He’ll make the world’s best gravy from my pan drippings. And If Brian and his daughter can make it, they’ll bring real homemade southern mac and cheese, possibly the world’s best comfort food. There will be other dishes as well, laid out on my buffet for a feast of biblical proportions. We’ll all praise each other’s cooking as we sip Pinot Grigio. The kids will spill their drinks and ask how much they have to eat before they can have dessert. My two-bedroom bungalow will fill with the sounds and life of 25 or 30 close friends and family members.

I know I’ll look around despairingly at least once, sure that the house will never be clean again. I know I’ll almost call my son’s name when corraling the kids for dinner, forgetting as I always do that he is never with me on this day. The day will pass in a blur, with a second meal at Michael’s mother’s in the late afternoon and a get-together in the evening for adults at Joy’s. I will fall into bed exhausted, probably late.

But right now it is quiet. I am drinking coffee alone. And I wish, more than anything, that you were here.

I love you,
Jon Anne