A Belated Thanksgiving

There are a two times of year that make me think about writing a blog more than any other, and that is Thanksgiving and New Year’s. I’ve had traditions over the years to write blogs on these holidays, and this year on Thanksgiving, as we were packing up the kids and the snacks and the diaper bags to head to Yiayia and Grampou’s house, all I wanted to do was sit down and write a blog.

But because of the kids and the diaper bags and the travel and the dinner, I did not get the chance. What I did get the chance to do was hand one child to a niece, hand another child to a grandparent, receive my first glass of wine in over a year, and relax in a child-sized stuffed armchair surrounded by family. It was, in many ways, the Thanksgiving Day I had always dreamed about.

When I wrote about The Art of the Solo Thanksgiving, I was wishing I could be part of a Thanksgiving celebration as an assumed member rather than a tacked-on afterthought—you know, the pity invite. And I realized this Thanksgiving morning, in the five minutes of calm before the packing frenzy hit, that I had gotten the gift I’d always wanted: a big family Thanksgiving, where I didn’t have to wonder with whom I’d be spending it (on the years I wasn’t flying to Colorado to meet my parents, that is), with all the chaos and joy and food and conversations that I had envisioned.

This year also made me think of another Thanksgiving, the one I didn’t know I wanted, that ended up being one of my favorite holidays.

It was the first Thanksgiving Rob and I were married. We were living in Dallas and decided to spend the holiday by ourselves, eating our favorite side dishes*: my homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, spanakopita, a fancy harvest salad. We spent the day in PJs and watched Rob’s favorite seasonal movie—A Muppet Christmas Carol—followed by my request, a marathon of the Thanksgiving Day episodes of Friends. It was cozy and magical, the kind of quiet simplicity I didn’t realize would be hard to replicate in the future.

*it is a widely broadcast fact—as I like to share it with gusto—that I dislike Thanksgiving foods, with the exceptions noted above.

So I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge these two Thanksgivings, the one that fulfills a long-held dream and the one that was an unexpected surprise. They felt like good reasons to give thanks. I would never have known in 2020 that just two years later I’d be married living in Dallas, watching a marathon of Friends, or a few years after that I’d have two kids and a 17-member Thanksgiving dinner waiting for me in Salt Lake City. Nor could I have known the joy of seeing my niece holding my sleeping 12-week old daughter, or my nephews giving Mac & Cheese to my son, or Yiayia and Grampou vying to get the most smiles and giggles from the grandkids.

This year has been full of big changes**—a new job, another cross country move, a million years of nausea, the birth of a new baby, and the purchase of our first home…ALL AT THE SAME TIME—and it’s easy to lose sight of the small things, the mundane moments, even annual holidays that pass in a blur. But finding a moment to pause, to acknowledge where we’ve been and how far we’ve come, and to jot down our gratitude (say, three weeks later) is worth doing, even if it requires wrangling a monkey child in your lap in order to finish.

**I say this every year, and somehow they keep increasing.

So thank you for coming with me through the journey from there to here. I hope this year you don’t rush past the milestones, the moments that seemed like far off dreams that have now come true. And I pray for unexpected magic during the in-between.