Flying Turkeys- Jessica Nelson

On the outside our Thanksgiving definitely looks like the picture in a magazine. We are dealing with 5 culinary degrees, a love of entertaining, and a crafty mother who loves to decorate things so truly nothing less would be acceptable on a holiday tailor made to my parents' skill set. But Thanksgiving is not all that appealing to me. Mostly because being around my family is not all that appealing to me. We have no family in Kentucky so for most of the year we can hide from all the problems that come with being connected to people but on the rare occasions we are dragged together it just reminds me of all the bad things we’ve gone through. It makes sense because we only see each other twice a year and at funerals which have been almost as prevalent (for the past 8 years we have had 1 family member die each year) so I have just as many memories if not more of bad times.

            On top of bad memories each Thanksgiving we always end up adding a new piece of family gossip. One particularly amusing year (to me at least) the family accused my cousin’s fiancé of being a drug dealer but typically the news is more depressing than amusing and it taints my day because without fail nobody told me about the bomb that was going to be dropped no matter how close to home it’s going to hit and I have to cope with this news while setting the table and trying to make small talk. And if the gossip hasn’t already ruined any chance of me having a nice time my family will gladly finish the job. I don’t know if it’s extra years of wisdom or less people in the family to choose from but the older I get the more relatives (or at least qualities of them, like stupidity for example) that I cannot stand. I’m finding that I’m slowly beginning to dread them all with very few exceptions and then you throw them all together and they well surpass my tolerance level.

            I don’t even really like the food. Sure I’m sure ours is well above average but I don’t like homemade mashed potatoes or green bean anything, turkey isn’t my favorite and neither is cranberry sauce usually (although I love when we have Lingonberry Jam and Kanicker Brod) so that mainly leaves is rolls, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and pie and I don’t like those because I don’t want to put on any of the weight I lost and better yet I would love to lose more.

            So what am I thankful for on Thanksgiving? The other 364 days a year where I don’t have to pretend to like these people or their food. My desk calendar pretty much sums it up: