Tradition

You’re looking at a photograph of (my pre-divorce) Chicago co-op.  It’s all set for Thanksgiving dinner.  I had done the tables up à la chinoise because all my Thanksgivings had themes and I had just gotten back from Hong Kong.

I remember that holiday vividly- even without the aide-mémoire of this photograph.

At the end of the evening- after all the guests had gone- Bill and I were doing a recap of the dinner.  Who was there, how the food was…  You know, the usual post-party post-mortem.

“Well, we had three old ladies here tonight,” I remarked.  “Your mother, Mary Lu’s grandmother and my grandmother.  They’re all well into their nineties.  I wonder which one of them won’t be here next year?” I said idly.

“Yeah, who knows?”  Bill agreed.

The ironic fact was that the next Thanksgiving, ALL of the old ladies were alive and kicking, and I was the one who wasn’t at my house for Thanksgiving.

That was the last Thanksgiving that I would ever spend with my own things at my own table with my own nuclear family.

The next year found Nick and I in Colorado, Natasha in college in Connecticut, and the rest of my extended family scattered to various dinner winds around Chicago.

Divorce is a cruel thing.  It is no respecter of long-held cherished family traditions. Twenty years of siting at my own table, eating a meal that I had lovingly prepared, and watching the faces of beloved family and friends as they ate, and laughed, and shared stories went right down the family court drain.

Traditions that I had held inviolate?  Hah.  Now deader than the turkey.

Over the course of the decades of Thanksgivings to come, at least Nick was a constant.  He wasn’t all that devoted to his mother, but he liked my cooking.

And he loved the fact that Snowmass Mountain usually opened for snowboarding that week. Hence my son was always at my Thanksgiving table, no matter what.

Natasha was a different kettle of fish.  Some years she would make it out to Colorado. Some years, it was too hard, or the winter weather too dicey to justify such a short trip.

I was disappointed, but I’d fill my chairs with friends of Nick’s, or the Snowmass demo ski team, or just about anyone we knew that had no family to turn to for the holiday.

It wasn’t the same as my old Chicago Thanksgiving, but I enjoyed it. One year, after dinner, Nick and my last husband- the Kid- jammed away on guitar and drums for awhile.  Much to the head-shaking amusement of my other guests.

No time for old traditions now.  There was an ever-changing cast of characters each year.

(And sometimes that included the husbands.)

When Nick got married, all that ended.  His wife Missy’s family is from Arizona, and for some arcane reason, she preferred to be with her mother and father rather than her husband’s mother on the holiday.

Nick preferred whatever Missy preferred, and I preferred to be on speaking terms with Nick, and hence that was the end of him at my Thanksgiving table.

And when Missy moved out to Los Angeles, all bets were off.  Nick was working in Chicago, and going out to see her every other week and on all the holidays. That really was the death knell for Thanksgiving with me for sure.

I called him on his very first SoCal Turkey Day.

“Happy Thanksgiving, sweetie. Do you miss my stuffing?  I know you love it, and I don’t want you to feel sad that you’re not with us today, and you’re not getting a home-cooked meal and…”

“This is the greatest Thanksgiving EVER, Dude!” Nick interrupted my sad repining.  “I surfed this morning!  I’ve never done that on Thanksgiving before.  It was awesome!”

He was bravely soldiering on.

Over the next several years, Natasha would make random guest star appearances, but for the most part, she stayed on the East Coast for Thanksgiving.

So this year, with Nick doing his Jan and Dean Surf City thing again out in L.A. and Natasha a brand new mother, I was resigned to the fact that I was going to be child-less at the holiday table once again.

And then I got a phone call from Natasha.  And she was excited.

“Zach’s got to come to Chicago on business!  He’s got a meeting at the mayor’s office and we are going to be in town for Thanksgiving. I’m coming home for the holiday!”

I never thought I’d be personally grateful to Rahm Emanuel for anything.  But boy, am I.

We had a whirlwind few days as Natasha introduced Sam to the Chicago branch of his family.

She also had an important eating agenda: Portillo’s, Beinlich’s, Joe’s. Here we are at Portillos’s.

(Photograph by Zach Tofias.)

I had already accepted a gracious invitation from my darling friend Joan A. to be an honorary member of  her family at the club for Thanksgiving dinner.  And since the baby tends to conk out around six o’clock p.m. these days, we decided that Natasha, Zach and Sam should come over to my house for a Thanksgiving lunch.

My holiday was really looking up.  There was only one challenge left.

Question:  So what do you make for lunch on Thanksgiving when everyone is headed to a turkey dinner fours hours later?  (My son-in-law is not particularly crazy about the traditional dinner, btw.)

Answer:

The pizza was terrific- and now Natasha had successfully completed her Taste of Chicago tour, too.

And, as she  wisely pointed out,”Who says traditions can’t be new ones?”

Hope your day was wonderful.

Now go out and make some new traditions for us.

With love from the Ross/Tofias clan.

(Photo by ZT)