Happy Thanksgiving!
If you’re new around here, you might want to go back to this time last year and read one of my favorite Thanksgiving stories: the origins of our family tradition of “Denny’s Day.” It involves drama of the highest order from the week we moved from Southern California to Charlotte.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Who’s In the Chairs
Given that today is a big hosting day for many people, I thought I’d tell you a story of a dinner I recently hosted.
This dinner was scheduled once for July. Given that there were twelve different households attending, planning a date that was mutually agreeable was quite a task. The day before we were scheduled to host, we discovered that we had been exposed (rather emphatically!) to Covid. Together with our cohosts, we decided to reschedule.
Fast forward to last week, the finally agreed-upon date for the rescheduled dinner. A nasty cough virus (not Covid this time) took me out and placed me in my bed for two and a half days. I am not usually that sick. So when I should have been carefully planning, exercising care, and working ahead for a restful and engaging time around the table, I was instead hacking up a lung and watching The Crown and The Dropout.
By the time Thursday and Friday rolled around, I was feeling a good bit better, but my time for planning carefully had passed. We decided to go ahead and host the dinner, and I cooked my part: a turkey with gravy. I purchased a couple of desserts and some drinks. We had agreed that everyone would contribute a family favorite: a side or a dessert.
As Providence would have it, a few people dropped out last minute. Someone was sick; someone else had a terrible day at work; others just didn’t show up. And so, when the dust settled, dinner was the following:
Turkey and gravy
Potato casserole
five kinds of dessert
Truly, a well-balanced and diverse menu. We chuckled, filled our plates, and sat down to eat.
About halfway through dinner, just as the conversation was settling in and becoming deeper and more intentional, one of the youngest guests (think: under 5) decided he needed to sit in his mom’s lap. He became increasingly glazed over until he finally let fly with a cough — and the next moment, he was throwing up in the trash can in the kitchen.
So we bundled that family out the door.
Essentially the evening was a comedy of errors from the time we conceived of it. But we still laughed and chatted and put in some time together. And no one will soon forget the slow, disastrous unfolding of our time together.
A long time ago, I heard someone say, “it’s not about what’s on the table; it’s about who’s in the chairs.” This wisdom has stuck with me.
Today when your turkey dries out; when you forget to bake the rolls; when you pull out an extra chair and find the leg is wobbly; when the baby spits up all over the new top you bought in an attempt to feel somewhat normal — remember this. All our best attempts at providing a restful, beautiful holiday are in vain if we lose the people in the process.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
For the Anglophiles
Reads & Listens of the Week
My friend David Mitchel reviews Wendell Berry’s latest Port William story: How It Went. “Like a bottle of wine, a memory will not lie about the land and weather that produced it, but the memory aged fifty years will not be as it was on first impression. It will either gain richness with faithful and judicious storage, or be ruined if abused or neglected.”
One of my favorite pandemic podcasts returned this week: Home Cooking. Samin Nosrat (of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat fame) and Hrishikesh Hirway are the hosts of this conversational delight. They take questions related to cooking, tell stories, and make bad puns. This show began as the hosts tried to help people cook at home during Covid lockdowns. I love it!
Listen to John Piper gently rebuke pastors who want to “continually narrate how bad things are”: “The last thing we want is for people to walk out of church on Sunday, seething in anger at their culture.…”
How immensely important to us are those things in our life that are stable and unchanging. So much of our world is in motion. How welcome are the bits that stand still. ~Christopher Robin Milne