On Thanksgiving warm-ups

Why being a single gay orphan makes 2013's best meal of the year cringe-worthy

I never liked Thanksgiving. I associate it with disasters worthy of their own entries (which they probably will get down the road). Coming from a large family where the over/under on the first fight at the dinner table was the canned cranberry sauce’s first trip around the table, I saw the day as more Rockbottom than Rockwell.

So now, being parentless, being single, I once again look at the 4th Thursday of the month issuing its seductive coo, and shiver. My three remaining siblings are off to 1) the beach, 2) the child’s finance’s parents, and 3) the basement of their home, with its poor lighting, dry bird,and out of control grandchildren. If I wanted, I could extract an invite to any of the three. I probably should. And yet, I have no desire to exert the effort.

My dad died earlier this year, 8 years after we buried the love of his love, my crazy red-headed spitfire of a mom. I knocked the eulogy out of the park, by the way. But the luncheon that followed that eulogy set in motion the ultimate paradigm- shift, at least in terms of how a family that never quite fit together to begin with approaches the times that define “family”. The glue (by this point, it was more like whatever they use to make a sticky-note stick) holding us together was now gone, and now we have to decide how much we actually enjoy spending time with each other in order to make plans. There’s no unifier.

So I’m pondering my first Thanksgiving completely on my own. While staring at a photo of a gorgeously brined and baked bird on the cover of Bon Appetit, and weighing options that are honestly scary in a “is this what becomes of the holidays from here on in” kind of a way.