A Thanksgiving Story

I am looking forward to this Thanksgiving not only because Meghan is home and there will be that perfect balance at the dinner table, but, also because I love that familiar nostalgic Thanksgiving smell of the kitchen and sounds of the house that seems to shout: we are indeed home, safe and happy for the holidays as we welcome all of our family and friends. And let me just say that I will be enjoying this year so much more than last year because last year was so overwhelmingly insane and almost comical that I almost, for sure, deemed my family most dysfunctional! Hence, the need to seek a therapist was finally upon me.

I love Thanksgiving and I have it at my house because I like the whole festivity of preparing a turkey and making a fun-themed celebration out of the holiday. Last year we were prepared to have 16 people—and in my opinion—the more, the merrier, I actually invited 21. As I was stuffing my 23+ pound bird with my homemade stuffing (love this recipe using sourdough bread, cranberries, carrots, celery, and walnuts—yum) and still wearing my nightclothes that revealed a bit too much breast and a little too little skirt, my doorbell rang and my first guests oh-so-merrily bounced through the front door shouting “Happy Thanksgiving”—um, 4 hours early.

So what’s it like not being showered, virtually naked, entertaining a profoundly autistic child, while frantically stuffing a 23-pound bird trying to get it in the oven on time and have your first guests arrive and looking to be entertained?

Well I think you can imagine!!

The morning got even better because my daughter didn’t understand that just 30 minutes cooking in the oven wasn’t going to do it as far as “being all done” goes. She loves turkey and kept trying to get into the oven for just a little taste—No, Winnie-the-Pooh, NO! So I was standing in my kitchen sucking down some wine with our first two guests (um, 11:00 am) and trying not to seem hostile while chopping up the vegetables and holding my breasts in (and up) while struggling to keep the oven door firmly shut with my left foot while my left leg was working tough against the stronger and most determined Meghan. And all the while I was trying to make it all appear—simply normal. Cheers!

Next on the nightmare—I mean—list, was finally grabbing a shower and changing into clothes that were actually appropriate for the general public to see me in. I left my husband firm instructions to watch Meghan and the oven door. And then when I had just started to enjoy my hot, steamy and rewarding shower—just letting go and relaxing in the massaging jet of the spray, Meghan, most abruptly, opens the shower curtain while holding up a large fork and a carving knife and trying to drag me out of the shower as if saying: time for turkey. Let's just say that Janet Leigh has nothing over me in the movie Psycho—cue Psycho music theme. Needless-to-say, it took me a couple of weeks to get over that one—I mean the Meghan version.

And if that wasn’t "entertaining" enough, then this takes the cake: my early guests were family from out of state and were planning on staying the night, of course, and one of the guests (an adult) has OCD and needed to “make himself” more comfortable in my home. And, as any good host, I wholeheartedly agreed. No! He didn’t get naked. It was worse! He rearranged my family room. Yup, just moving around chairs and couches and rearranging the blinds. Really! I would not lie. It was a changed room in the end and I was not any happier than Meghan was—an autistic child with OCD herself—and since I could not make her understand why it looked the way it looked, I had to quickly change it back.

The comedy of it all was by the time dinner was actually served—thank you very much—half my guests were already half in the bag, and the family room was still making the bloody-hell switches. Ugh!!

This year we will have fewer people and no overnight guests!! But I still got the same size bird—just in case.

What can I say, perhaps I was an abused child! ;)

"A Happier and Functional Thanksgiving to You and Yours!! ;) "