My First “Adult” Thanksgiving

Today, November 21, 2018, is Stuffing Day. So it is appropriate to write about Thanksgiving dinners.

Thanksgiving 1978

Forty years ago, on Thanksgiving Day 1978, my husband and I had the first Thanksgiving meal in which we had a part in the planning and preparation. I think we brought a couple of bottles of wine to the meal. We didn’t make the turkey. Nor the stuffing. And I don’t think we even brought a pie (which is now our most frequent contribution to holiday meals).

We started Thanksgiving Day 1978 in Missouri but ate our meal in California. As I wrote on Monday, we had spent three days interviewing for attorney positions in Kansas City. My recollection is that we flew back to San Francisco on Thursday morning, arriving by noon Pacific time, in time to eat.

We had planned to have our Thanksgiving dinner with a few other couples we knew in law school. The male halves of these couples were other law students in the same class as my husband and me, and the women were their wives or girlfriends. One guy really liked to cook, and our dinner was at his apartment in Palo Alto. He roasted a turkey and a duck, and he might have cooked a ham as well. The other couples brought side dishes and desserts. Because my husband and I were traveling, we were assigned to bring wine.

This wasn’t the first Thanksgiving I’d spent away from home. During the three years I’d spent back East for college, I’d spent the holiday with friends and their families—twice in New Jersey and once in Maine.

Al and Theresa exiting the church to “Ode to Joy”

And 1978 certainly wasn’t the most significant Thanksgiving I’d ever had. The year before we’d celebrated with my parents and the wedding party for our wedding, which was scheduled for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving 1977 will always be front of mind for me.

But 1978 was what I consider my first “adult” Thanksgiving. There were no older generations present to take responsibility for the meal. Our contemporaries did it all. We were all of voting age and older, and most of us had been for several years. But for me, being part of the holiday meal planning and preparation (however slight my role was) marked me as an adult.

I’d helped my parents with the meal preparation in the past, but I’d never done much. My mother didn’t like her kids dirtying up her kitchen. My father liked to cook but was very independent (and messy, but Mother never complained about the mess so long as he cooked). So my role was generally reduced to stirring gravy or putting the rolls in the oven. And setting the table—I was good at that.

I did help with clean-up, ever since I was of middle-school age. Washing and drying the good china and silver and crystal always seemed to take forever.

It was several more years before my husband and I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for our families. I think the first time for that was in 1984. And that year, my parents were visiting, and my father still did most of the work. Though I took responsibility for washing and drying the dishes.

When were you first responsible for a holiday meal?