food v memories

some thoughts

It’s 0521 and I have been up for a couple of hours thinking about a column for today (Yes, yes, I was also sifting through yesterday’s crossword puzzles I had removed from the Wall Street Journal and the Annapolis Capital Gazette as I never got to them yesterday but want the house as spiffy as possible.). After two and a half hours, I am not sure I can think of anything the least new for a national holiday centuries in its evolution.

But I do have one distinct Thanksgiving memory to recall.

As a London School of Economics graduate student, I lived in a women’s hall in Chelsea. The original building, situated across a road from the Thames, was property of Sir Thomas More so it had a history, as they say. It was a cool location but also gave me a sense of how different the world sees us than we see ourselves sometimes. The international women living there were truly from across the globe, though we Yanks were represented in the numbers one might expect.

The women who staffed the kitchen made little pretense of satisfying all of us any day of the week. This was pre-globalization so British food was pretty different from what one finds today. We never once had a raw carrot. Our highlight weekly was actually fresh green salad on Sunday nights which most of us inhaled but fresh greens were not a part of any other meals of the week. These ladies provided us solid, carb-heavy meals that were typical of London in the late 1970s, fuel to keep us going.

I got to know them a little better than some of my sister residents as I used to darken the kitchen for hot water early in the morning. I was this curiosity because my body demanded real black coffee which I satisfied by buying a pour over filter, some real coffee from a roaster on Kingsway, and my mug. The ladies became my friends when I would show up to see whether they had yet lit off the kettles early morn. I am sure, in retrospect, I was a nuisance but they forebore me with smiles than went from tight to much broader over the course of the year. Gradually, they welcomed my visits.

The one day they made an incredible effort to do something radical, to my surprise, was Thanksgiving of which they were keenly aware. These ladies were determined that all residents would have a proper American Thanksgiving. I asked why since we didn’t celebrate anything else in particular, including British holidays.

The primary cook, a woman who reminded me of Mrs. Patmore in Downtown Abbey but that may have been conflating things over decades, was appalled by my question. She explained patiently that Britons all, every single one of them, goes home for Christmas. She noted it’s expected by all and it’s truly a national holiday as a result—period. Americans, she went on, all have a different national holiday—Thanksgiving. She noted we don’t seem to celebrate Christmas as fully as our British cousins, an astute observation about our diversity. She knew that for Thanksgiving, we all go home, every single one of us, and it’s expected (not clear by whom)—period. Or at least that was what she had seen about us on the tele.

We don’t grasp often enough the impressions of this country that our cultural exports like movies or television portray. We have Scottish friends who actually intended to call Chicago cops “assholes” as a term of endearment on a visit decades ago because they had seen Clint Eastwood do it so often on film (this is a true conversation as two readers of this column can verify since it was a conversation with them). Other people around the world think each and every one of us has a gun which we use about like a tissue every morning. I could continue listing the cultural messages we impart but this is really about Thanksgiving.

These two darling women in the kitchen at Crosby Hall honestly believed each and every one of us was expected to get home for Thanksgiving, come hell or high water. They had seen the holiday referred to too many times, always in the same light, to consider it might be a fiction or perhaps an aspiration. So, they worried we Yanks, stranded thousands of miles away on this island from which we had declared independence two hundred years earlier, might be homesick without our Thanksgiving food. It was, as they made clear when the conversation progressed, the least they could do to thank us for all we had ever done for Britain.

They genuinely seemed to think we go home solely for homemade Thanksgiving food. I am not making this up. And they knew what that was by watching movies we produce. Not a surprising source of information.

The meal they coooked was a pretty accurate rendition of Thanksgiving. We had turkey, we had a facsimile of dressing though heavy on then appalling white bread Britain consumed back in the old days, yams, Brussels Sprouts, oven roasted potatoes, and pie. I don’t think we had anything with corn but that was still uncommon in the U.K. back then. I confess it was a touching dinner, even though I have never been the biggest fan of Thanksgiving foods. It was one of the most memorable meals of my time over literally almost half a century in periodic trips to Britain.

Forty-five years to the day after it occurred, the memory almost brings me to tears. Why? Because their effort was the heart of what Thanksgiving really means.

No, they did not understand that Thanksgiving is almost invariably about memories with food as a part of them. So much of the holiday gets labelled as food. My husband has gone back and forth about basting, brining, dry brining (I clearly am undereducated about turkey in my vegetarian fog but am a good listener), cooking on a rack versus directly on the pan, and so many other aspects to this huge bird. My daughter-in-law is providing the yams, the corn pudding, and the pies while I got off easy with stuffing and green beans.

Thanksgiving is not, however, a single dish as countless people don’t eat turkey, can’t stand dressing or gravy, find pies not their thing and the like. I have been at dinner tables where goose was served (does seem to be something the Pilgrams likely would have had)and a friend texted me a few minutes ago that her husband is making prime rib. Like everything in this country, Thanksgiving provides us opportunities for diversity.

Merely the regional distinctions in our food make it far less than a uniform menu than our pop culture messages indicate. Try stuffing, for example: cornbread, sausage, stale white bread, and, knowing Texas, likely Tex-Mex stuffing for starters. Pies flavor selections are not much more predictably certain, though the cooks at Crosby Hall assumed every Yank ate pretty much a whole pumpkin pie.

I propose they were actually missing the real meaning of the event, despite their incredible intentions. Thanksgiving is about memories. Often we trying to recreate them to suit our personal needs, if not societal narratives. It’s definitely the most American of holidays, though we too often write out the shared meal between Pilgrims and the native population they lived near. We too often forget how harsh conditions were for those who came from Europe in the 17th century, only to find a land of plenty but one that could be pretty uncomfortable. Jamestown may not have had a Thanksgiving dinner but it had lots of swampy, insect-infested lands the native population didn’t particularly care to share with these illegal aliens. Plymouth was similarly a resident American population giving wide birth much of the time to these illegals who arrived without permission. The shared meal was a good step but hardly indicative of the future of the relationship between Europeans and those who proceeded us to these shores. But that is part of what we can recall as a memory when we choose.

Thanksgiving, however, is much more personal to many than something in 1621. It is an annual celebration of birth (a relationship, a grandchild, a puppy) while also a reminder of those we have lost, regardless of whether it was this year or decades ago. I suspect 95% of us expect the day to be what we remember from our earliest childhoods—at least what we think we remember. We often seek to recreate traditions passed from generation to generation but we generally nibble around the edges to mold things to our contemporary lives, even if we don’t recognize we are doing so. There is nothing at all wrong with that but it explains why every household probably differs from every other, no matter what we expect or try doing; once you combine families, something new certainly results, no matter how hard we may try keeping precisely those experiences we recall from events with generations now passed.

Actions, of course, have consequences, including on Thanksgiving.

I wish each and every one of you the most joyous of memories you create today, hopefully with someone you love. I am sad when anyone spends this holiday alone as the memories thrive on sharing them with someone else. I also am mindful that far too many do without so much on this day, amid the plenty the day so centrally celebrates. That reality of those without is a reminder of how lucky so many of us are, whether it’s merely living in this country, sharing our homes with others, or having the ability to get up out of bed in the morning despite of physical ailment or depression. Millions do not have those options so I rail against taking them for granted. If you can’t be with everyone you want because of distance today, send a text or call as you will make the person’s day much brighter—another memory to cherish.

I appreciate each of you taking a few moments to read this. I absolutely welcome any rebuttals, thoughts, comments, or celebratory notes you can share.

We are having glorious rain in the parched Chesapeake so I have no sunrise color for today. I do enclose clouds we saw when we went up and down Main Street yesterday in search of an older brother present for a youngster who just “received” a baby brother.

I always close with be well and be safe because these are fundamental to every day of our lives. I hope you have them today. FIN