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No More Making Big Holiday Meals (hooray!)

I was looking through my photo archives the other day and noticed how faithfully I photographed our Thanksgiving table every year. This one is from 2011, when we had a guest along with the kids (I think my nephew, although I'm not sure.) My parents are gone, and I've ended my relationships with all the toxic people in my life, so unless my favorite person or my nephew are visiting I'll probably never make a big meal for Thanksgiving again.

Thanksgiving 2008. My mother expected me to help with the cooking for Thanksgiving from the time I was five, and I could make the whole dinner by myself before I was a teenager. Even back then I did much of the work. I've always liked cooking, but not the effort and stress involved in making holiday meals. It was just one more thing that was expected of me. Mom trained me to shoulder the burden alone, and I have for the last 33 years (exception: one year while in the middle of a divorce I went to a girlfriend's house because I was alone and had nowhere else to go, but I brought a dish and helped out with the cooking and cleaning up there, too.)

Thanksgiving 2017. In retrospect I find it remarkably unkind that almost everyone depended on me to produce a huge Thanksgiving dinner without ever once offering to help with the work (to be fair, I never asked for help. That would have shamed me.) Still, I always waited for someone to care enough to offer to help, but that never happened. Memorably my mother came over one year and sat in the kitchen to watch and criticize me but didn't lift a finger. After all the years she had to do it I suppose she felt she'd earned the rest, but what about all the years that I helped her? It was quite disheartening.

Thanksgiving 2014. I didn't take pictures of the Thanksgiving when I made dinner for eleven people, the largest holiday meal I ever cooked, because I was too busy. I roasted two turkeys, made five and six times the amount of food that I usually did, and worked myself into utter exhaustion. That year all of the guests interrupted me constantly to pester me with questions (the worst thing you can do to someone who is trying to cook) or ask me to get things for them, but also did nothing. That really was the most dreadful Thanksgiving of my life, so I'm glad I didn't take any photos.

Thanksgiving 2020. The only person who gets a pass from me is my guy. He can't cook, but every year he's always helped me serve the food, carve the turkey and later he cleared the table for me while I washed dishes. For that he is a prince.

Thanksgiving 2015. Making a Thanksgiving meal is really a thankless job, in my case particularly so. I'm not bitter about all the work I did for so many years, but I am glad I don't have to do it anymore. Maybe some time in the near future someone will actually offer to make Thanksgiving dinner for me. Wouldn't that be wonderful? I'll tell you what, if that happens, I won't sit there and watch them work. I'll help. :)

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