We Gather Together, Apart

 

One Thanksgiving pie

In any other year, the very thought that I would sit down at 9 o'clock on Thanksgiving morning to write a blog post would send me into peals of hysteria-edged laughter. 

Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year, as I've noted in this space every single year. I love the season, I love the food, I love the lack of commercialization as vendors leap over this holiday to get to Christmas. And most of all, I love that for as long as I can remember, my extended family has gathered to celebrate the day. 

For the better part of three decades that gathering took place at the House on the Corner as my parents, all my siblings and their families, and any other un-familied friends I could gather in would pack the house for hugs and laughs and turkey and all the pie we could eat. When the expanding family outgrew the house we moved the celebration to a college meeting room, then to a church fellowship hall. We began alternating hosting duties with Much Older Sister in a different part of the state, and last year there were dozens and dozens of best-beloveds hugging and squealing and passing around new babies.

The event was not without its glitches--one year my mixer gave up the ghost before the potatoes were mashed, and another year the turkeys weren't cooked through at the appointed eating time--but it didn't ruin the day for even a second. 

We were together, and that's all that mattered. 

This year is, well, this year. 

Husband and I will sit down to turkey in our dining room table with only two Boys, both of whom quarantined and tested before they started home. The other two Boys are with their own nuclear families in their own homes. My siblings are likewise siloed with their immediate family members, and my youngest brother is cooking a full dinner for Dad and his wife. 

There is one turkey, not six. One pie rather than 13. Quantities scaled down from 60 servings to four, plus leftovers.

It could not be more different from the Thanksgiving I hold in my heart. I should have been up at 5:30 to sauté the onions and celery for the dressing, mentally checking off when the sweet potatoes needed to come out of the oven and when the green bean casserole needed to go in.

I'm sad, of course, that I won't see my Dad, or be with Baby Wonderful for his first major holiday. I'll miss the almost tactile swell of love that gusts in with the arrival of each family.

But, oh, you cannot imagine the gratitude with which I am counting my blessings. Maybe it takes a year like this, when we're all so close to the precipice, to be able to articulate the causes of our joy.

The family, today all safely tucked in their own homes. We cannot take tomorrow for granted, but today...

The friends from every age of my life, who this year have been so precious in the reconnections and checking-ins. 

The technology, without which we would not have seen or heard our dear ones. 

The new tone of hope in our national discussions, a time in which our elected leaders are urging us to be kind and think of each other. 

The selfless, beyond-exhausted service of our health workers, our teachers, and especially our minimum-wage store clerks and farm workers. 

Every single person I see wearing a mask and acknowledging wordlessly that we are in this struggle together. 

I could fill the internet with the my list of blessings, even in 2020. All of those who last year I assumed I would see today are counting their own blessings around their own small tables. 

And next year, God willing, rather than gathering apart we will once again gather together.