For my family, Thanksgiving was all about the food. My mother was not a spectacular cook, but she could do turkey. She found a recipe once for cooking a turkey in a greased paper bag, and that was her method of choice. She used the Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, adding onions and celery. She made mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans and peas. She put two packages of brown and serve rolls in the oven after the turkey came out, then usually forgot about them until they started to smoke. We always called them black and serve rolls, but we ate them anyway. Desert was pumpkin pie, apple pie and home make fruit cake. We started dinner in the early afternoon and it basically last all day. Desert was followed by several rounds of leftovers.
I have finally learned to practice a little restraint for Thanksgiving. We had a lovely meal yesterday, without overdoing it. My son helped me cook, which was wonderful, and my husband helped clean up, always appreciated. I talked to my daughter and my Dad, and both sounded happy, so my day of thanks was complete.
Here is a poem for those who were perhaps less restrained.
The Hymn of a Fat Woman
by Joyce Huff
All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.
Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.
Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.
They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.
Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.
I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.
