Family traditions still matter

Thanksgiving, as I’ve noted before, was my mother’s absolute favorite holiday. She adored the day, though her preparations sometimes met with mixed success.

For years, she served a dish known as apricot mush, with an emphasis on the mush, loved by no one but the cook. Her sweet potatoes served as merely a conveyance for the browned marshmallows on top, which were picked clean, leaving the mashed orange goo looking all the more forlorn. She had many talents, though gravy wasn’t one of them. And the Parker House rolls – where this custom came from remains a mystery – were either burned to a barklike consistency or forgotten in the oven to be discovered the next day.

After she died in 1997, we kept these traditions going (well, not the mush), as well as the candy corn and cranberries strewn across the tablecloth, and her odd, but winning trifecta of appetizers: chopped liver with party pumpernickel, herring salad with rice crackers, and roasted pecans. Most of the dishes were served only at Thanksgiving, including turkey, which she adored but rightly recognized as a lunch meat, making the feast all the more memorable. My mother loved Thanksgiving so much that it was her favorite meal to order when she went to a diner.

For the next five years, we continued the holiday at my parents’ house in Washington. My father shopped for provisions and I cooked, taking extra care to burn or abandon the Parker House rolls in the oven.

And then my father died. He died the day before Thanksgiving 2001. The morning before that, my mother’s good friend had propped me up in the grocery store as I shopped, in a daze, for ingredients. My siblings flew in and we went on with the holiday in the house where our parents no longer lived.

I can’t remember a single thing about the meal.

Since then, we’ve been on a quest for a new celebration, but it’s hard when you’ve carried on in the same way for so long. More than the food, Thanksgiving was about my parents, and the eccentricities that made the feast their own. The gravy never really mattered.

For a few years, we went to our cousin Lisa’s house. She happens to be an excellent cook. I’ve long relied on her expertise in making great gravy. She’s an amazing hostess, too, and tends to include every foreigner she knows, resulting in a tremendous, polyglot dinner party that barely resembles Thanksgiving except that turkey is served. Two years ago, I found myself seated next to an Australian oenophile who was kind enough to share two superior bottles of his native Shiraz he kept hoarded under the table.

I’ve written about our search for a new custom, and the suggestions and invitations poured in. A reader kindly asked us to join her table, though we had never met. She was sure our families would get along.

Being orphans of sorts, friends extended offers though frequently with the caveat “we would love to host but need to warn you that (insert relative’s name here) can be a handful.”

It occurred to me that we might develop a sideline career as professional guests and defusers of other families’ dysfunction. You know how friends think their parents are wacky while you find them utterly charming? How, somehow, just by having an outsider present, all that alien and impossible behavior goes to ground? We could provide that valuable service to the highest bidder or best cook.

This year, after consideration and a panoply of lovely invites, we’ve decided to join my brother in Manhattan. Our uncle and aunt are coming, and it looks as close to resembling our traditional gathering as possible, given that the holiday was about our parents and our parents are no longer here.

Matt promises to cover the table with candy corn. I’m making the trifecta of appetizers, though he’s always hated liver. Unbeknown to him, I’m bringing Parker House rolls to either burn or abandon in the oven. As I mentioned before, no one knows where the tradition comes from, but it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without them.