Thanksgivings at the P household are truly unique: the traditional Turkey Day dishes have a Indian twist (except for my favorites, the canned cranberry sauce, apple butter pumpkin pie, and pumpkin cookies), everyone changes from their nice clothes to sweatpants within 5 minutes of finishing dinner, and we camp out in front of the TV for some football, beverage and dessert in hand. At some point, there’s screaming, a minor meltdown, hugging and making up. Those not involved in the snafu find themselves pouring another drink. Kitchen times are designated, with mine first thing in the morning. Coffee in hand, still in my pajamas, I mix my pie batter (the crusts are made the day before), combine cookie ingredients, mash wasabi and ginger into my Asian smashed potatoes (which the adults love, but the kids aren’t big fans of), and quietly exit the kitchen to avoid my mother’s culinary warpath.
This is one of the few days that our family (and friends so close that they are considered family) come together for a feast and a festive time. I am thankful for many things, and am very thankful for this day specifically.
The P Thanksgiving of 2009, while missing pumpkin-flavored desserts, tandoori turkey, and Brian Dawkin’s phenomenal performance against the Giants, had the familial love and familiar beloved Indian dishes that continued to make me thankful.
My cousin B, a very successful executive in a major engineering firm, walks in the door at 5:45 a.m. Thursday morning, to the utter shock of the family. Everyone assumed he would be back in Philadelphia, celebrating Thanksgiving with the other Ps. Instead, he hopped on a flight from his Tuesday meeting in Raleigh, NC eastbound, spending his Wednesday night crammed in a Hyderabad-bound British Airways flight, in the middle seat at the back of the plane (as close to Dante’s Inferno as my 6’3″ cousin could get), with an elderly Indian grandmother poking him to assist her with operating the TV, putting her luggage in the overhead compartment, and flagging down the flight attendant for another chai.
However, after 12 hours of utter misery, an hour-long drive home on bumpy, unfinished Indian roads, he walks in with a huge grin, arms open for hugs, and his mother totally in shock. To the point that she turns to look at me and asks “Am I still sleeping?”
Five hours later, when my father walked in (he arrived via Mumbai on a later flight), the major shock was repeated, followed by hugs, arm punches, “Why didn’t you tell me?”s, and more hugs.
And that’s when I acknowledged that Thanksgiving is more than the turkey, the pumpkins, the football games, and the sweatpants. If you have the family, then you have everything.
And that realization is what I’m most thankful for this year.
(The past four days has been a whirlwind of work and hardcore P family bonding time. Sorry for the lack of posts. Am fully back on the blogging wagon now).
