Decades of Thanksgivings

I'm six, and the crinoline petticoats of my aunts whish around me in the kitchen.  Thanksgiving Dinner always takes place in the late afternoon at my great-aunt's home, and she and the younger women gather in the kitchen to pull it all together while the men watch football games in the den.  It's kind of a boring day, if the truth be told.  The women are focused on mashed potatoes and the men on touchdowns.  There's nothing much to do in my aunt's house, and it's too cold to spend much time outside. 

I'm sixteen, and I'm spending the long week-end away from boarding school with my boyfriend's family.  His mother is in the hospital and his father is struggling to oversee a houseful of children whose ages range from 22 to two.  Needless to say, supervision of our activities is minimal.  Thanksgiving Day itself brings a host of relatives I barely know.  We will spend Friday night at the Rolling Stones concert at Boston Gardens, and Saturday in Provincetown, way out on the end of the Cape.  It's the 60s -- need I say more?

I'm 26, and my husband and I are spending Thanskgiving with my family.  We seldom go home anymore, but Thanksgiving is a relatively (no pun intended) stress free holiday.  We're finished with school and have our first real jobs, so we have money and great clothes.  Little do we know that this period of life is a brief one.

I'm 36 and again, we're with my family.  Our children are five, five and two, so the trips have become a bit more difficult and stressful.  My own family of origin is beginning to break down into its isolated components, a process that will be largely complete in a  few more years.  For now, we go to the Turkey Bowl football game that my uncle hosts for dozens of family and friends on Thanksgiving morning.  My little guys love the Turkey Bowl t-shirts they've been given, and they love to participate with the big guys, many of them cousins ands friends who have recently been high school and college athletes and take the Turkey Bowl rather seriously.

I'm 46 and my family is realigning itself.  I don't want to go there anymore, so we head to my in-laws.  The gathering is a low key one, and the kids thoroughly enjoy themselves with after dinner games with cosuns and aunts and uncles.  I am so not a game player.

This year: 51 and off to Chicago.  Last year our son in college there called at the last minute to announce that he had too much work to think about coming home, so this year we are going to him.  A fancy downtown hotel and a restaurant dinner.  Given my stepmother's condition, I would like to be with my family, and not having seen our son in two months, I want and need to be with him, so I guess this is a sandwich generation-pressured week for me.