As a child, Thanksgiving was my least favorite holiday. I didn’t understand why the adults loved it so much. All we did as a family was sit around, eat food, and lay on the carpet when we were finished with dinner. Thanksgiving wasn’t exciting to me unless some family drama was going down or my cousin was getting her arm stuck in a chair.
Thanksgiving, however, and my views about the holiday, have changed greatly since my youth. For one, I’ve learned to appreciate the cooking. My Uncle and Aunt always prepare a fantastic meal of raviolis, turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, pumpkin pie… You name it. Basic American family meal with an Italian twist, and it’s great.
I’ve also learned to appreciate the expected chaos that comes with Thanksgiving meals.
We all sit around and pick at candy corn or M&Ms for a solid hour before everyone arrives (my mom still scolds me, at age eighteen, for eating chocolate before dinner). When all of the cousins arrive, my Aunt Felicia makes her rounds to figure out what all of us want for Christmas so that she can pick out what she’s buying the next day (Black Friday). We are required to bring a list WITH pictures… but she never follows it anyway. (Usually she buys my brother the latest tech trend and my cousin, Nicole and I get jewelry… Or money!) That’s about the time when Uncle Dom arrives. He’s always late, but mostly everyone’s okay with it because he’s cool. We start with an appetizer and my Uncle Larry brings out the sparkling apple cider for us “kids.” The funny thing is, I still drink the apple cider whereas my oldest cousin was being offered wine by age sixteen. There’s a “kids” end of the table, and an adult end. I was never allowed to sit at the adult end because even when I became an “adult,” I was always the one in charge of “entertaining the kids,” as my mom would put it.
Next is the main course. It always begins with a wide variety of foods spread out on the table. And it’s all not allowed to be touched until someone says grace. The cousins play a game of “not me, I did it last time” until Uncle Dom yells “GRACE.”
For most of us, that works and we start eating, but my grandma shakes her head in disappointment. As we’re eating, my Uncle Larry ALWAYS finds a way to get me heated through political debate in which he glorifies Trump and his immigration laws… all the while my Aunt, who is an immigrant from Colombia, is sitting right there. Yikes. My cousin and I try to bite our tongues and my mom’s sitting next to me hitting my thighs, telling me not to say anything stupid. Then Uncle Mike and Uncle Dom find some story from childhood to distract from the political debate, but that creates the argument of whether or not their stories ACTUALLY happened. My mom usually gets involved, followed by my Grandma, who says they’re all wrong, and then my dad just sits there with his beer not knowing what to say. “Poor John,” they say to my dad when they realize he doesn’t know what’s going on. He should be used to this loud Italian conversation by now though… it’s only been TWENTY years since he married my mom!
By the time dinner plates are cleared, four year old, Gino, is running circles around my brother and screaming about trains and engines, while my cousin Nicole and I are trying to hide on the couches to avoid more confrontation. Dessert is out, and peace instills. Grandma sips on coffee and eats cake (even though the doctors say that she shouldn’t be eating all that sugar), and she cackles and giggles until the rest of us all catch her contagious joy.
My family is crazy and loud. And a lot to take in on Thanksgiving (which is still my least favorite holiday), but I’m so thankful for them. They’ve all shaped me into the crazy, fun person I am today and I wouldn’t trade these past eighteen years of Thanksgiving chaos for the world.
SaveSave