Every Thanksgiving I did my best to make the holiday as Norman Rockwell~ish as possible. There was always a turkey. There were pies.  There was a huge mess in the kitchen. 

Last year my daughter asked if we could have a Cajun-style turkey from Popeye's. Yes. That Popeye's.  Since it was her first visit home from school, we indulged her. It was actually pretty good.  I'm certain several relatives rolled over in their graves and I suspect some of my friends here are reading in stunned silence. That was the year Norman Rockwell left our home for good. 

 Thanksgiving became complicated after I married my husband as I was promptly disowned. I had no family on my side to bring to the table. My daughter would have to make do with one side of the family in her life.

 That is why the first Thanksgiving I was pregnant I insisted my husband's family get together for the holiday. I wore my red plaid maternity dress and orchestrated a Thanksgiving meal in my mother-in-law's kitchen. My baby was going to have a family, dammit. And I knew no one would argue with a half-crazed pregnant woman wearing a dress that matched the tablecloth. 

I made turkeys. I made some weird yogurt-Cool Whip pies. (More rolling over in graves, I know.) I did my best. We had a wonderful time. We had chosen the right side of the family to be a part of.

  We continued the annual Thanksgiving tradition until my mother-in-law died.  After her death we seemed to lose touch with one another.

Until this year. My sister-in-law is the one who called to resume our Thanksgiving tradition.  I am once again excited to assemble like a real family. I am excited to eat together, watch football,  (not so much), catch up with each other and eat some more.

My childhood Thanksgivings were filled with the most elegant food and served in the most elegant setting. Yet as delicious as the food was, it was served with a side of sadness so big, it made it hard to swallow.

I rarely equate Thanksgiving with perfect, elegant food anymore. (I think the writing was on the wall when I carried home Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixins from Popeye's  last year.) 

We will drive to Baltimore and have Thanksgiving with the only family my daughter has known.  It will look nothing like a Norman Rockwell painting or a page out of Martha Stewart Living.

It will be loud and informal. We will sit with plates on our laps and the football game will eventually make some of us carry our plates into another room to be heard.

 I will listen closely as my nieces talk about their jobs and their boyfriends. We will discuss shoes at length.  We will trade stories about their grandmother and how much we miss her. I will ask my nephew to show the home video of them as little kids at a family barbeque.  After the pie, (which will most likely not be yogurt-Cool Whip,) we will take pictures. The girls will look as beautiful as any of the models in the magazines.

And on the drive home we will wonder why we waited so long to get together with our family.