Agile Diplomacy and Unerring Persistence

This is the first time we’ll host Thanksgiving here in the U.S.  Agile diplomacy and unerring persistence were required to navigate a number of seemingly insurmountable shoals.  And now, in a few hours, my older daughter and her boyfriend and another Beijing chum, my little brother and his wife and their son, my sister and her son, my mother and my stepfather, my father and my step mother and four guests of my sister's who hail from across the Atlantic will all be here with my wife, my little one and I. 

I’ve dug up the old copy of the Thanksgiving play that my kids once put on in Beijing, six years ago, when they were so much smaller. “Would you please work with your sister to put one together with your nephews?” I imagine them running out and reciting lines from the balcony above the living room, parents cheering below.  “What?  Yeah.  I know.”  She’s waiting for her sister’s return before she takes any action. 

The bird’s huge.  At twenty-eight pounds I’ll need to get this in there soon.  It will need at least four and a half hours.  I’m making rutabagas and turnips for the vegetarians.  I have never made either before.  Rutabagas I chop in cubes.  When I try to peel the turnips the tool I have shreds them into pasta like strings.   This gives me an idea and soon I’ve shredded all six of the turnips I have into a hairy mound.  There’s no room in the oven and I’ll only be able to bake this turnip casserole later, after the bird’s out.  But by now I can taste the dish in my mind's eye.

People come and it is lovely to see them but the day has a ferocious momentum all its own.  My father’s ambles back out to the kitchen to chat, to see if he can help.  My sister does as well.  All I can afford them is a witty quip.  Otherwise I’m going to burn something.  The bird needs basting.  This stuffing’s been in too long.  And soon it is time, to put everything out.  And when I finally get to sit down, after everyone else has eaten and fix myself a plate of food it is so quick and there is so much of a conversation buzz about that I don’t really savor much of anything that I took so much time to prepare.  Everyone else seems to think it was tasty.  I hope it was. 

Thursday, 11/28/19