I started doing Thanksgiving years ago, for people that hated their family, or didn't have family, or lived too far away from family.
My friend Kathy always brings the creamed onions and the pie. Kathy we will miss you and your onions this year.
Sniff
This will be the 20th "orphan" Thanksgiving and for a few days I thought about calling the whole thing off, and going out for dinner.
When you are a parent, you really can't just call things off, so there you are.
Thanksgiving will go on.
More details to come later. Now for a bit of nostalgia, my favorite color.
I think the best Thanksgiving ever was about 15 years ago, when we were still living in my beloved neighborhood, Northwest, in my beloved building, the Wickersham (this link shows all the apartments looking all gussied up, when we lived there it was much more rustic.)
Our apartment was the 3 bedroom version, and it was on the second floor- you can see the apartment on the building photo, almost smack dab where the power lines cross.
When we lived there, that ugly parking lot, was our beautiful garden, which included a quince tree Rolf planted.
We were cruelly driven out by gentrification- I feel that I must mention this fact, every time I can!
At the time I was smack in the middle of a seven year relationship with the badman (not really such a bad man, but the name was given by one of my friends, and it stuck) and the badman's mother was visiting from Florida.
There were seventeen of us in total at the table, including many jazz musicians and the very conservative tv sports announcer, brother of one of our friends (who had the bad taste to bring green bean casserole to my dinner!) he fit in nicely with badman's mother.
I was very nervous and jittery, scared that one of the musicians would say something to scandalize the mom or the sports caster.
To add to my nervousness, Rolf took a bath (not a quick shower, but a full, long drawn out bath. Complete with steam, opera music and splashing about.) about 25 minutes before we were to eat.
I don't like any unpredictable thing going on when I am planning a dinner party and bathing at the last minute, felt very unpredictable to me!
I was really riled up that evening.
Between the mother vibing me, and demanding a TURKEY (we were pretty rabidly vegetarian) the musicians smoking out on the fire escape, and Rolf bathing, there was practically steam coming out of my ears.
My friend Karen was running around trying to smooth things out and help.
She walked into the kitchen, holding soggy bath towels that she had picked up from Rolf's bath, just as I flung open the oven door to pull the giant turkey out.
I had foolishly baked it in one of those flimsy foil pans, and the minute I touched the pan, it folded in half, projecting the slick, basted turkey up, into the air.
As the turkey took flight, the pan juices poured all over the floor in front of me.
I was paralyzed, but as I turned my head, I saw Karen put her towel covered hands out and catch the turkey, before it hit the ground!
She stood there, with a hot turkey in her hands and said
"here".
Rolf walked in at that moment and the two of them plated the turkey and carried it out, while I grabbed more bath towels and sopped up the juice.
We had a gay old time, that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning, and I think Karen left with the saxophone player.
No comments:
Post a Comment