The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I don't mean at Plymouth. I mean the first Thanksgiving I ever hosted.

Fortunately it was nice and small. A trial Thanksgiving, if you will. Just my mom and sister, who had flown out to see my houseboat. (And, I suppose, me. And my turkey...)

I'd taken Wednesday off to prepare. I've always loved the day before Thanksgiving. It counts as a "real" day, but no one ever actually does anything. I remember in elementary school we'd only go for a half-day, just long enough to get credit for the schoolday, and then after maybe about an hour of real work we'd spend the rest of the morning doing recess and eating cupcakes. Even without recess and cupcakes, the day before Thanksgiving always provides a welcome change of routine.

I spent mine this year running errands, although I'm not sure I'd do that again on such a day. The stores were fine, but the roads were packed. I should have hit the grocery store in the morning and quit there. Surprisingly the grocery store wasn't too crowded - well, except for the baking aisle. No one ever goes to the baking aisle, except the day before Thanksgiving when all of a sudden they discover all the ingredients America's insta-meal eaters had forgotten they need on this rare occasion they actually make something from scratch.

Thanksgiving dinner, chez bateau, was pretty straightforward. Salad, bratkartoffeln, which I've decided I miss from Germany (that and a decent Schnitzel), cranberry jelly, bread and butter (a homage to my grandma, whose Thanksgiving table was never without), wine, and, of course, turkey. I'm proud to say I managed to defrost and then cook said turkey without killing anyone, despite all the warnings that turkeys are little more than plump and juicy bio-hazards poised to wipe out the country. Who needs terrorism when you instead have American culinary incompetence.

Technically my mom supervised, but somehow (hey!) I ended up doing all the work. Maybe it's nothing to brag about that I'm a grown woman who had never managed to cook a turkey before, but I'd never had occasion to. The world is pretty much divided between "turkey preparers" and "guests," and I've always been a guest. At all my childhood Thanksgivings my grandma cooked the turkey. As an adult it's usually been my step-mom or some other random host on those Thanksgivings when I was not either on my own and not cooking turkey, as it is not a single-person's meal, or in Europe, where no one was cooking turkey as it was just another random Thursday. So this was the first time I was in charge of it, and it's reassuring to know that I could be again.