CityView Magazine

8 November 2021 FAMILY MATTERS Traditionally untraditional My family's flexible Thanksgiving feast BY CL AIRE MULLEN we've always done it that way" approach in favor of flexible plans that account for the changing seasons of life. Historically, sometime around mid- October, a self-appointed family member would send out a text message on our family thread that said something along the lines of, "Has anyone thought about plans for anksgiving yet?" And then, the ball would officially be rolling on the Herculean task of agreeing on a get-together date and time that accommodated the schedules of one parent, his four adult children, their three spouses, and, ultimately, five grandchildren. Two of the adults are medical professionals with on-call schedules that sometimes come into play. We married siblings must also be mindful of our in- laws' holiday plans, and several of us have mapped out agendas that involve alternating anksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with each side of the family in a rotation that switches every year. While great in theory, the problem with this is that no one can ever really seem to remember W hen I look back on it, I think that a seed was planted several anksgivings ago when my baby brother suggested that we have Caesar salad along with our turkey, dressing and sweet potato casserole. Aer the cooks of our family balked at his wildly untraditional proposal and unanimously shot it down, my brother simply replied, "Ok, but why not?" Which got me to thinking ... why couldn't a Caesar salad exist on the anksgiving table beside the other "vegetables" du jour – collard greens seasoned with smoked ham hocks and simmered in two sticks of butter, and green bean casserole topped with extra fried onions? Why are we so resistant to change when it comes to our holiday celebrations? As the years of my adult life have gone by, I've witnessed my family's growing willingness to adapt some of our rigid, decades-old holiday traditions and entertain more practical plans. It has been a slow evolution, but we've made a collective effort to let go of the "just because exactly where we all were the year before. Over the years, we've had to work our feast around hospital rounds, babies' naptimes, deer hunts, duck hunts and Turkey Trots. On a few occasions, some of us have attempted the virtually impossible feat of attending two family anksgiving meals in the same day. One year, we all trickled into Dad's house at suppertime for Round 2, everyone except Dad and my bachelor brother already as stuffed as the turkey, toting overly tired little ones and side dishes. at was the first anksgiving that my family sat down to eat aer dark. I recall unbuttoning my jeans and thinking that I should have brought a family- sized bottle of Pepto-Bismol in place of my untouched pecan pie. It was aer that year that my dad, typically a traditionalist in every sense of the word, proposed a radical solution to the growing challenge of gathering every member of our growing family for anksgiving. What if, Dad asked, our anksgiving didn't even happen on anksgiving? He reasoned that this would give his kids the chance to enjoy anksgiving ursday with their in-laws in an unrushed fashion, and we could all gather later in the weekend for our own feast. Aer all, said my dad, we can be thankful any day of the week, and what really matters is being together. And so, this past anksgiving, my family all convened at my house on Saturday. I set the table with pumpkin-themed paper plates and napkins aer I took inventory of my china cabinet and realized that family members had already far outnumbered the eight-place-setting china collection that I'd added to my wedding registry as a 22-year- old. As I divvied out plastic utensils, I wondered if my mother and grandmothers, each a quintessential Southern hostess, were looking down on me with great judgement. As the years of my adult life have gone by, I've witnessed my family's growing willingness to adapt some of our rigid, decades-old holiday traditions and entertain new, more practical plans. November 20th Red Apple RUN! 2021 For Diabetes Carvers Creek State Park 995 McCloskey Rd • Spring Lake NC Two Races! November 20th To Benefit Red Apple RUN! 2021 For Diabetes Carvers Creek State Park 995 McCloskey Rd • Spring Lake NC Two Races! 10K @ 8:30am • 5K @ 8:45am Registration its-go-time.com or BetterHealthCC.org Call Better Health at 910-483-7534 for more information! Carvers Creek State Park Two Races! 10K @ 8:30am • 5K @ 8:45am Registration its-go-time.com or BetterHealthCC.org Call Better Health at 910-483-7534 for more information! Please remember us on Giving Tuesday

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