the Thirtieth Story

For today, my one and only thanksgiving story. My family never much did thanksgiving growing up. There were four of us, and we ate dinner together every night. We didn't have any extended family within driving distance, and, most importantly, we're not people inclined to be bound by tradition. Generally, we didn't make a big deal of it. Dustin's family, though, makes a very big deal of holidays. After going to his extended big meal two years running, I put my foot down, and insisted that we were going to my mom's for thanksgiving. He, very logically, argued that my mom doesn't do thanksgiving, so I called up my mom, and asked if, you know, maybe we could do this thing? She was game, and called up my brother, who agreed to come out. Then she called me back and asked how traditional this ought to be. Since Dustin was so used to a big  thanksgiving, and I was keeping him from it, I thought we should try to do a turkey, and some pies. So mom bought some frozen pies, and a turkey.
Mom's a teacher, and her kids homecoming day was thanksgiving morning. She wanted to go to the game; we could either put the turkey on before and have dinner in the early afternoon- far too traditional for us- or wait till we got home and have dinner around 6. We opted for the latter. Then the game went into overtime, and there wasn't time to come home before picking up Tristan and Yukka, and it was pretty late before we got the turkey in. New Yorkers at heart, this was fine- dinner would be around 8. Mom has a roaster thing separate from the oven; we put the turkey in this and turned it on. It emitted black clouds of smoke. We took the turkey out and cleaned the roaster, put the turkey back in, mixed some cocktails and went down to the beach. About an hour before the turkey was scheduled to be done, we headed back up the hill to put on potatoes and check on the bird. We opened the lid of the roaster to a completely raw bird- the damned machine never got turned back on after the cleaning.
We had pie and wine for thanksgiving dinner, and turkey for dessert. We're adaptable people, and for that I am thankful.