I really don’t like cooking. Every year, I try to get out of making food all day on Thanksgiving by suggesting we go out to eat at a nice restaurant. But every year, my family says how much they like our simple traditions and that they want to have leftovers to enjoy. At least, that means I don’t have to cook for a few days more days.
Normally, I get up at 7:30am to get the turkey in by 8:00. We turn on the Macy’s Day parade and I listen to the jubilant performers while I start to prep the side dishes and get the table ready. I delegate a few jobs to my family members like peeling potatoes and chopping onions since I hate what they do to my eyes. At noon, my mom likes to watch the dog show to see the beautiful long haired working dogs. Since we are dog people, it is a way for her to connect with her two grandchildren. Wonderful smells start to fill the house as we anticipate eating our feast.
We usually eat our meal around 2:00 in the afternoon. I hate how fast everyone eats after how many hours it took to cook it all. But that is just the way it is, so I try to enjoy being together and savoring the tastes of my favorite dishes: sweet potato casserole and stuffing with gravy. It is also one of the few times a year I enjoy cranberry sauce. I like the ugly jelly one that comes in a can. I try to slice it in a way that looks more attractive. Since all of our relatives live far away, there is usually only four or five of us around the table that I decorate with a cornucopia of artificial fruit that belonged to my husband’s parents and a vine of fall leaves. We generally celebrate a quiet Thanksgiving together and look forward to seeing more family at Christmas.
There was one year, however, that things turned out to be not so quiet. We thought our holiday would be even simpler than normal since we only had one long-time friend in the city we had recently moved to. I had bought a very small turkey and a few side dishes that I would prepare for my husband, our guest and me.
Shortly after midnight on Thanksgiving of 1998, I began to feel incredible pain. The pain was so strong that my husband took me to the hospital. The pain lingered through the night growing more frequent feeling as though someone was squeezing my body in a vice grip. The friendly and kind nurses monitored me and a doctor gave me some medicine that took only a little bit of the edge off the pain.
In the morning, our friend who happened to be a doctor, joined us in my room. At lunch time, my husband and she celebrated the holiday I had long since forgotten about by eating bland turkey from the cafeteria at a little table in the corner while I looked on with envy eating my ice chips. The pain continued for hours and hours and eventually our friend went home.
Around dinner time, when I couldn’t take the pain any longer, our “little turkey” was finally ready to come out. I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl weighing in at 9 pounds, 8 ounces. She was bigger than the bird waiting uncooked at home in the fridge. We heard her cry that first loud cry that newborns do. The doctor looked her over and my husband helped cut her umbilical cord. The nurses cleaned her up, wrapped her a warm, soft, white blanket and placed her my arms.
That was the year I finally got out of cooking, but I did much harder labor instead.
REALationships 