Thanksgivings Past

A friend once described that strange feeling you get when everyone’s gone home for the holidays and you’re the only one left on campus. It’s not quite loneliness; it’s more of a man-in-the-moon thing, somewhat like the cover of St. Exupery’s Little Prince. The planet gets smaller; you can see the curvature of the earth. The rain is wetter, the cold is colder and your feet never get warm.

We're entering the family season, a time for gustatory and financial excesses. More often than not, it’s all about remembering when you all last met like this, who was there and who wasn’t and what happened to everyone. Uncle Billy got drunk as always and passed out in the bathroom. The turkey was too moist, too dry, too large, too small. Old arguments are revived and long-term resentments dusted off. The Big Chill with tryptophan.

Many decades ago when my parents were still living in the States, when I was newly married in a condo in the Maryland suburbs, I fixed a whole Thanksgiving meal and stuffed the turkey with a mixture of sage, parsley, rosemary, a hint of basil, a touch of anise, a teaspoon of oregano, and a quarter ounce of top grade marijuana rendered to powder in the Cuisinart.

My parents loved the meal. Everyone was jolly including the other guests and all raved about the quality of the potatoes and rice. Even the Lipton ice tea and Gallo wine got compliments. In fact, my father said, he’d never had a meal that was so succulent, and in one sitting he ate more than most 70-year-old males do in three days. Desert--a variety of cakes and pies--vanished in instants.

My mother, I think, was wise to the ploy. She’d spent a lot of time in North Africa during World War II and was conversant in the mysteries of hashish. But still, she wasn’t sure and was too well-mannered to inquire.

I drove then back to their house in the evening and my father, a smile on his face, fell asleep in the back seat. My mother chattered like a squirrel, remembering meals from long ago. She got sad when she thought of all the acquaintances and family that had passed away in the last few years and she spoke about moving back to France to be with old friends in a walkable city. My father, too, would welcome the change. He loved Paris more than any place in the world, would spent entire days rubbernecking in the smaller streets, finding here a plaque honoring the American soldiers of World War I, there a small private museum that opened only three hours every other week.

The marijuana Thanksgiving was the last one we spent together. They went back to Europe, I stayed here. My marriage ended and for a half-dozen years after that I didn't celebrate T-day. Even now, many, many years later, I do not know if my parents knew of the tainted turkey.

That's my most memorable one.