My Daughter Taught Me That Thanksgiving Can Be Full of Joy, Even If You Are Unable To Eat
The holiday isn’t about the food at all — it’s about spending time with the people who nourish our souls
This week, people all across the country will start calculating how early they need to wake up to give the turkey enough time to cook before their guests arrive. They’ll dig out their mother’s old apple pie recipe and scour the internet for ways to make sure their cornbread isn’t too dry and their stuffing isn’t too wet. They’ll argue about whether the mashed potatoes should be lumpy or smooth, the cranberry sauce homemade or canned.
Once upon a time, I was one of them, stressing about my Thanksgiving menu weeks in advance. There was the year I bought a kosher turkey to meet the needs of some distant relatives, using needle-nose pliers to pluck the stray feathers that were still attached. Another year I decided to serve a smoked turkey which half the guests didn’t eat for fear that its pink hue was due to undercooking.
But my daughter has since taught me that the food at the Thanksgiving table is utterly beside the point.
The first time I fed my daughter was the day I met her in Guatemala City when she was three months old. I held her tentatively as I offered her the bottle of the special formula my husband had gone to three farmacias to find. I marveled at her huge dark eyes and perfect dollop of a nose.
A few months later, we were given clearance by the Guatemalan and U.S. governments to adopt her. We named her Dalia and brought her home to our little family back in Boston. Soon she was eating the Cheerios and cut-up grapes I placed on her high-chair tray. Before long, Dalia’s sophisticated palate demanded dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and smiley fries, which I justified by serving with a generous helping of carrots.
But then, at five, Dalia was diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease: MERRF Syndrome. Now, along with her nuggets, I served a heaping bowl of applesauce that masked the assortment of medications she had to take. At nine, her disease erupted. A cold turned into pneumonia, landing us in the hospital for three months. She came home with a roomful of machinery — a fancy wheelchair, a ventilator, a food pump, and an array of equipment we didn’t want to believe our little girl needed. Dalia had a trach tube in her neck and a feeding tube in her belly. The only thing she could eat was the Pediasure we poured into her pump bag each day.
Dalia hated not being able to eat even more than not being able to walk, so my husband and I tried to shield her from everything food-related. We took turns eating dinner with our boys, while the other played with Dalia in her room. We hardly drove within a one-hundred-foot radius of the supermarket if Dalia was in the car. And that first Thanksgiving after the surgeries, we gave up the sit-down dinner we were accustomed to and had a casual buffet instead, keeping Dalia occupied with Chutes and Ladders and Curious George.
She came home with a roomful of machinery — a fancy wheelchair, a ventilator, a food pump, and an array of equipment we didn’t want to believe our little girl needed.
Then, the night before Dalia started at a new school, I read the schedule online. In between “Speech Therapy” and “Social Studies,” were two words that terrified me: “Cooking Class.” I wanted to get her excused, to keep her home, to switch schools even, but my husband convinced me to let her try the class one time before helicoptering in.
The next day, Dalia came home with a huge smile. The first thing she did was pull four chocolate-chip cookies out of her backpack. She handed one to each family member and watched with pride as we ate them and cooed over their deliciousness. When I emailed the teacher to see how the day went, she said Dalia’s favorite was cooking; she loved getting her hands gooey and watching the cookies take shape through the oven door.
That night Dalia asked if she could help make dinner. And then, since she’d helped make it, we sat together — all of us — at the kitchen table to eat it. It felt like a reunion, the first time we’d spent dinner time together since Dalia caught the fateful cold eighteen months earlier. Our family was whole and it didn’t matter who was — or wasn’t — eating. What mattered was my son’s stupid jokes and my husband’s funny stories and my daughter’s gigantic smile.
Dalia had always been the most social of my three kids, yet I’d taken away her opportunity to participate in the most social ritual we have. By trying to protect her from feeling different or left out, I was doing exactly that — making her feel different and left out. When we gather in the kitchen, prepare a meal together, or linger around the dining room table, the food is often beside the point.
Consider: Last Thanksgiving, most of us shared our turkey and fixings with just our small family unit or limited social bubble. Kids didn’t come home from college, grandparents didn’t fly in from Florida. No matter how elaborate our feasts were, we heard over and over that, “It just didn’t feel like Thanksgiving.” The food couldn’t make up for the empty seats at our tables.
Thus, while we overindulge in potatoes and pie, in the end, the holiday isn’t about the food at all. It’s about spending time with the people who nourish our souls.
This year, I’ll rapid test and wear a mask and spend little time worrying about the menu. My daughter can’t eat, but she can be part of the holiday in other ways that matter so much more. And for that, I am eternally thankful.
Jessica Fein writes about mothering a child with a rare disease, staying rooted when life tries to blow you down, and juggling crazy amounts of flaming knives. She is currently working on her memoir, BreathTaking: Rare Girl in a World of Love and Loss. Connect with her on Instagram at @feinjessica for real talk about warrior moms.
