Thanksgiving.

It's true that we have been married for almost twenty-six years, and we have been parents for twenty-four years, with children at several ages down to ten.

It's true that we both know how to cook a big dinner and we both know how to organize and plan.  

It's true that we've emerged from the howling chaos of the past few years, just like everyone else.  And at the same time not at all like anyone else:  that same grinder that left everyone wounded both generally and privately, so that we can all nod knowingly at each other, gesture vaguely at all this sort of thing; and at the same time maintain a sort of beaten privacy about the specifics.  Yes, we came out of it.  Yes, we learned.

It's true that our grown children (the ones who can) are choosing us,  to be home with us this holiday.  And Mark's parents are joining us too, driving up.   We are loved.  The family wants to be together.

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Still….

there is nothing like hosting Thanksgiving to drive home the point that we are completely winging this big-family thing.

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My early memories of Thanksgiving as a child are charmingly static:  or maybe they all layer over each other, year after year, so that I can't distinguish one from the next.  "Over the River and Through the Woods," learned in elementary school music class, we sang in the car on the way to my own grandmother's house.  We sat in my her small living room, some at the dining table, some on the couch or in the easy chair or in the rocking chair with TV trays; there was a turkey carved with an electric knife, and mashed potatoes and dressing, and sweet potatoes and green beans.  There were always exactly four cousins, since I am number three and barely remember the fourth, my brother, being born.  My uncle proclaimed the pie better even than last year.  My mother and aunt chided Grandma for not eating and she insisted that she got filled up on the smell.  Everyone talked loudly all at the same time, and football was on the television in the same room, there was laughter and good smells; and it was the same each year, something fixed, something that just happened, like the moon and stars wheeling in the sky.

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And then you grow up and the secret is revealed.

Every year now, I am suddenly gobsmacked, right after the falling of the leaves and around the time of the falling of the snow:  Holiday traditions don't just happen!   Sooner or later you have to make them yourselves!

Like…. you just have to invent them!

And in theory, you could do anything.   Hang the moon and stars however you want.

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Look back, look forward, at the same time.   Logically, my grandmother's Thanksgivings could not have been static.  Logically, and if I think really hard about it I can come up with details—logically each year must have been at least a little different.  Logically there was a time before the loud, full-packed living room.   Logically, my grandmother made choices.  And my grandfather, too, in the time when he was living, before I got old enough to form many memories.

Long ago, they invented Thanksgiving for me, and they made something imperfect but good enough.   

I guess it's not that I have to squint terribly hard, or turn it over and over, to find the seams and brushmarks and sticky places.  They are there if you look, and pretty obvious.

It's more that I don't feel that I need to.

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So.  Mark and I may be winging it, with our Thanksgiving pot roast and our cluttered living room, but do the kids realize that?  Will they forgive us for improvising?  Will they found their own families and discover the secret on their own?

Maybe they do, maybe they don't.  Maybe they will, maybe the won't.  But you know, I am starting to think it's going to be okay either way.