I refused to go crazy this Thanksgiving. I usually make a million things, even if we are going to someone else’ house as I must have :my: stuff. Thanksgiving is intricately tied into to cooking rituals with my mom and making her food, her recipes, form her handwritten cookbook as I have my whole life…well i really like it. Since every years is so the same..I can pretend, in my head, even if just for a minute, that it is years ago and she is right next to me,or running down to the basement for a minute to get a big roasting pan.

But something happened this year, or didn’t rather, and I just didn’t have it in me. Thanksgiving snuck up, I didn’t know my brother was coming till the night before, we are a bit tight on money as my car just died and we had to suddenly buy a new van and I had to work the night before rather than just cook. Plus we had decided to go to my Mother in laws and she never quite pulls off a holiday to what I expect(yeah, my snob side rearing up),so I was leery of investing alot into emotional expectations. So I didn’t have time for the ritual or emotional investments. I just got up on Thursday morning and made do with what I had.

I made her stuffing. That is a must, but usually I have it in the Corning ware the night before, chilling in the fridge with the glass cover turned upside down, the bowl of fresh cranberry relish perched on top. And all night long I sneak in and steal a cold lump of bread and mushroom, soaked in flavored butter. I purposely excluded the pumpkin pie. Must be the first time in 30 years that I didn;t make the pie. I made an apple crumb and that was good, but I was not in the mood for the pumpkin. On the morning of, Rye bugged out about needing Pumpkin, so I was prepared to make it, the cranberry and zucinni nut bread too, but then he ran out and forgot the list that I had added to. Then the pumpkin he did get was premixed. I was going to amend that anyway, but then it got late, so I said screw the pumpkin after talking to his mom. She had two store bought ones coming..so done. I broke the spell. One year Garin made it..that was cool. I think he should take over.

I have the perfect funny “Men cannot find things if their lives depend on it” story.

Rye likes to make that onion spinach dip in a bread bowl yummy, so he bought a can of spinach. SO Thanksgiving morning he says to me “Claud, where did you put the can of spinach?”.

So what do I know? I ask him if he had looked in the pantry where we keep our canned and dry stuff..and he says he had looked all over. “Did I throw it out of the shopping cart? Where could it be?” I must have done something horrible with his spinach. He just can’t find it.

I finish what I am doing and dry my hands, and then go look in the pantry. And literally, I open the door and I see the can of spinach RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE! I kid you not. Now granted it was turned, so there was a bit of trickery in it. The spinach can was camouflaged as a generic looking can: no obvious green or leaf graphics, yet, I saw though it. I actually thought for a minute that he had to be joshing me the whole time. It was too funny and so obvious, he couldn’t really have not seen it!

So I call him in, almost laughing..and ask him if he had looked in the pantry for his spinach. And while standing in front of it, he says again, “Yes, I can’t find it” and so I tell him to put his arm out and just reach. Until he touches the spinach can. Yeah, that close. LOL

My brother is so cool. I talked to him almost all day. A great period of that time was to talk about adoption. His inquiry, I might add. And he was so open about it, and so smart. It was just really delightful as I didn’t have to explain anything to him in great painful detail over and over, like I told him deep stuff..but he got it all on the first time. No brick walls, no fustration, no inability for compassion. And it wasn’t as if he was like crying or anything, but you could see that he was just so struck by the illogicalness of it all, and then in awe that the practices were legal. Like over and over again he said all day, “They can do that? How can that do that? That’s just bad! That’s WRONG How is that legal?.”
I wish people were more like my brother. I love my brother becasue he is my brother, but I just like him as a person too.