My mom was queen of Thanksgiving, and all things fall.
My mom lovingly named her house Dawn in the Autumn Mist, and yes, it was my mom’s house, in which she allowed the rest of us to live. Hand-stamped leaves of gold, green, yellow, and brown adorned the walls behind the dining room table, and the couch cushions in the next room matched the fall leaf pattern. The carpet was a speckled green, white and brown, and mimicked a lush mossy forest floor.
My mom was the queen of Thanksgiving, and all things fall.
Christmas traditions in my house were expensive. Extravagant gifts, each carefully curated to an individual’s passions and personality. But they were nothing compared to the time, love, and energy poured into Thanksgiving. Less about pilgrims and patriotism, football or parades, Thanksgiving was the epitome of family.
When my grandmother was alive, I remember her carting in paper grocery bags full of cracked filbert nuts, or maybe they were hazelnuts. I can’t be sure after so many decades. We’d sit around the dining room table, fall sunshine streaming through the picture window, picking shells out from between the nuts. To be honest, I have no idea how she planned to use those nuts. I can’t recall a single recipe in which they were featured, but I’m sure they were used – every last one of them.
Throughout the day, relatives would slowly trickle in, jockeying for parking space in the front lawn, sure to leave enough room for a spirited game of basketball later in the day. The burgundy porch (seriously, the entire house screamed fall) was littered with the red and yellow leaves of the Japanese maple that draped over its railings, and people had to be careful not to slip in their decomposing soup. Mom couldn’t bear to sweep them up. They were too beautiful.
As the sun began to set, the fire ablaze in the fireplace, aunts and uncles would set folding tables end-to-end to make a single table large enough for our family of 30. Sure it had to wind into the hallway, but that was okay.
The point was that we were all sitting together.
The smell of yam rolls and Brussel sprouts wafted out of the kitchen, and occasionally, one of the many chefs would open the backdoor to check on the turkey roasting outside. My mom (and our entire immediate family) were vegetarians, so the bird had to be cooked in a convection oven on the back porch.
Inevitably, a chase around the house would ensue as someone (often my eldest cousin) discovered the stash of coveted Yam rolls, which my mom only made once a year. Chasing him with flour-dusted rolling pins and wet dish towels, they tried to act mad. In truth, everyone loved the ritual of it all.
The list of traditions on this holiday is long. Those not keen to read a novel would request I stop here. After all, the point isn’t to recount every last detail and every last memory of my childhood family. The point is to commemorate traditions loved and lost.
I’d like to say that we grew out of these traditions.
That our hours flipping through catalogs, drawing Secret Santa names, or having spirited debates around the table littered with leftovers, were altered and adjusted as our lives became full. That we each started creating our own traditions, with our own sweethearts and children. However, the truth is much more abrupt.
The untimely death of my mother brought nearly all of these traditions to a screeching halt.
We tried to hang on for a year – to recreate the Thanksgiving magic she wielded so well. We made the food, shared the stories, and desperately tried to commit these traditions into our muscle memory. But, as with everything in life, change is inevitable. Whether at our bidding or despite our pleas to endure, nothing lasts forever.
It took me a long time to find joy in Thanksgiving again. For years it was a visceral reminder of all that had been lost. But over time, a great deal of time, I picked up certain traditions that I had been unable to separate from my sadness and rediscovered their joy, remix style.
Dawn in the Autumn Mist will forever encapsulate my idea of a perfect Thanksgiving.
One in which a large multi-generational family – loud, gregarious, and loving beyond measure, came together to be thankful. Thankful for all that we’d created and all that we’d lost. It’s these memories – the lessons about love, forgiveness, and loyalty – that make up the foundation of the traditions that I now pass on to my children.
Like everything in life, traditions are subject to time. With every passing generation, change is inevitable. But when tradition is, at its core, about gratitude, love, and belonging, it becomes less about the how and more about the why.
Through all the iterations of traditions past and all future iterations yet to be discovered, we will continue to pass along the stuff that matters – the love, the belonging, the unconditional acceptance… and yes, the yam roll recipe too. Traditions are more than a list of things that we do on holidays. They are the manifestations of a family’s most deeply held values.
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