I have celebrated Thanksgiving in many places and at many tables. In Savannah, New York, Germany, Paris, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, New York, Clemson, South Carolina … and, today, in Los Angeles, our new home.
Angela and I arrived in California on November 1, and set up a temporary home in a building 31 floors downtown above Olive Street. This morning she’s helping pack foodstuffs for homeless people who have made their home on Skid Row, and I’m putting the final touches on our Thanksgiving dinner contributions. And thinking of dishes from the past. Of roasting peppers for a dressing, and mixing cranberries with horseradish and onion and cream.
It’s raining and overcast, and I hope that helps the firefighters in Santa Barbara. Our smoked turkey (not from those fires; this turkey was smoked in Tyler, Texas) is ready, I made sweet potato pies, and Julia Child’s mashed potatoes are under way.
We are dining with friends of a friend — a couple who live in West Hollywood asked us to share their table with them and their 18-year-old son home from college and their 8-year-old daughter.
At that table today, I will think of my mother, whose crescent rolls and pecans pies I’ll remember when I am old and dimming. My mind will glimpse my grandmother Ida, and my aunt, Shelby, whose cooking pleases me still and produces in me a longing that often approaches the painful — those biscuits and fried chicken, the Low Country boils, with their blue crab and shrimp and sausage and corn, and the divinity. A certain Thanksgiving spent in Clemson in a small apartment full of laughter and literature and beer and wine will float around me.
I hope you feast well today, in the company of good and gracious people. They will not be near you forever.
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