Tomorrow is...

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. Millions of Americans will be flying "home," going to friends and family to eat turkey dinner. It's the busiest travel day of the year in the US.

I've been back to the US once for Thanksgiving in my nine years here, I think, although I'm not very good at keeping track of these things, and I stopped keeping a journal shortly after moving here. The entries became so repetitive, it was painful. I once read an article in The New York Review of Books that said pilgrim women didn't keep too many journals. The article went on to state something like, they were too horrified by what they saw to write anything down. Stunned into silence.

I went back that year to say "goodbye" to my brother who was leaving on a two year Mormon mission in the Philippines. He speaks Ilokano and Tagalog fluently now. The only Filippino I've ever met lived nearby me in the dorms at Hunter. She went home every weekend to her father's house in New Jersey, and he'd give her enough food for the entire week to take back with her.

My family will be divided between Utah and New York. My sister in New York has made a tradition out of cooking Thanksgiving dinner. She'll share it with our father, and one of our three brothers. My mother and older sister usually go to my aunt's house. One of my brothers will accompany them. One will stay at his place. Our aunt's house usually has several tables full of people.

My aunt's husband is a cowboy who rides in rodeos. Once, back when I was a troubled teen, I made the statement that I didn't like cowboys, which confirmed my uncle's dislike of me. Actually, this uncle is a high school counselor who also rides in rodeos. We went there one Thanksgiving, and my cousin took me to the neighbor's house to play cards, where we both got drunk. Later on, I was given all the blame for leading her astray. I was the bad one, but she took me to the house. She's a professor of political science in California now, and the pride of her parents. They still don't like me.

A few years ago my husband's cousin went on a trip to the US with her mother. One of their days in New York was Thanksgiving. I told them, "Everything's going to be closed. Why don't you go to my sister's for Thanksgiving dinner?" This cousin is a dairy vegetarian, so my sister went out of her way to make her something vegetarian. Thanksgiving dinner is a solid day of cooking, and usually involves more cooks pitching in dishes. She and her mother never thanked my sister for the dinner. She had a website of her trip with all sorts of snide comments about Americans, their twangy accent, and terrible photographs of chain linked fences, and graffitti. Typical. Each day of her trip was a tooth in a poorly drawn mouth. The only reference she made to Thanksgiving day was their ride on the "tram," (actually, it's the Subway) to Queens. Maybe that's her Dutch way of giving thanks?

Once, I went to visit her mother for a night. She lives in North Holland, nearly two hours away. I took my kids. She criticised me the entire time, didn't cook any dinner or offer us anything except bread and cheese, and tried to sell me an old, pilled up sweater of her daughter's, so that I could "help her." Ten Euros for a worn out sweater. What a bargain. I told her no thanks. My husband says that Northern Dutch women are just like that. After we got back here, she called to say that the bread mix I'd given her was delicious.

I was considering making a tofu turkey tomorrow with stuffing. It looks like a great recipe. My husband is the only person in the house who eats meat, so I'll have to buy him a turkey breast, and make that. Then here's pumpkin pie. I usually make it out of fresh pumpkins, and yams. I actually have some of those. They're a rarity here, but they had a lot of them at the market in Rotterdam a few weeks ago, and we haven't eaten them yet. I consider myself lucky.