Wendy Thanksgiving

To quote Mick Jagger, let me please introduce myself.

I mean, I’m not a man, I have limited wealth, and my tastes run to chocolate and bad movies.

Preferably at the same time.

I haven’t been around as long as Mick, but I have been around long enough to have cooked a Thanksgiving dinner or two.

Or eight.

But I haven’t.

It’s not for lack of effort on my part.

Take my first Thanksgiving as a married girl.

I am literally a turn-of-the-century bride.

Think about that.

It’s what my grandchildren will say over my casket as they look at what will probably be a holographic collage of my wedding pictures in, like, 2082.

Well, 2082 is maybe a bit optimistic. That would make me well over one hundred years old when my grandchildren marvel that actual cameras were still in use the year I was married.

But, hey. Mick is eighty. One of his kids is like seven or eight, and Mick just dropped new music. So, you know, there’s hope for us turn-of-the-century brides.

Anyway, my first married-girl Thanksgiving.

My husband’s mom, who throws a Thanksgiving Martha Stewart would envy, hosted Thanksgiving that year.

I decided to bring sweet potatoes.

I had a recipe. A yummy recipe I found in a magazine. It called for real vanilla beans, intended to wow guests with their subtle yet surprising flavor.

I wanted to wow guests with subtle yet surprising flavor.

While shopping for ingredients, I ran into my newly minted uncle-in-law. Eager to make a good impression, I told him about my subtle yet surprising sweet potatoes.

He was aghast.

Sweet potatoes, he told me, were my mother-in-law’s thing. I couldn’t – no, shouldn’t – bring sweet potatoes to Thanksgiving.

Vanilla flavored or otherwise.

Under no circumstances, he declared, should I upstage his sister’s sweet potatoes.

I laugh at this now. My mother-in-law is so kind, so gracious, she would have stowed her sweet potatoes for mine. But at the time, I was cowed by my near transgression.

Another year, I hosted Thanksgiving myself. I persuaded my dad to make his deep-fried turkey. I enlisted my guests to make sides. I even had a few make desserts.

I cooked nothing that day. In fact, just thirty-six hours before my guests arrived, I had lounged on an Aruban beach, a piña colada in one hand.

And a piña colada in the other hand.

The years tumbled by. Though I have magazine recipes for seasoned roast turkey, succulent rosemary turkey, even a best-ever turkey – I have never cooked a turkey.

I helped my husband cook a Thanksgiving moose once.

But we don’t know each other well enough for that story.

Yet.

I have magazine articles insisting I spice my cranberry sauce with citrus, that I make a dozen sides, that I make cinnamon-sugar pastries from excess pie dough.

But I have heeded none of these directives.

I even have an article about diffusing awkward moments around the Thanksgiving table.

But I never host.

So they’re not my problems to diffuse.

More like grab some chips and enjoy the show, am I right?

I should probably regret my Thanksgiving failures.

But I don’t.

Let’s be honest – when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, it is better to receive than give.

Like Mick, I watch Thanksgiving unfold with glee.

Pleased to meet you.

I too might be in need of some restraint.