Brian and Libby's Blog

Thanksgiving

For the past three years Brian and I have, in typical married fashion, split our holidays between each of our families. Because we spend Christmas Eve at home so we can be at all of Northway’s services, we always do Christmas at my mom’s…three hours driving after 6+ Christmas Eve services is much better than 8. Thanksgiving, therefore, has become a tradition we spend with the Howe family.

Howe-style Thanksgiving was a complete shock to me, I won’t lie. My Thanksgivings growing up always held surprises, but there were a few staples I could rely on: like my Uncle Sol’s chicken curry, the thanksgiving song (don’t ask), 4 video cameras, a fitted bed sheet on a concrete floor (again, don’t ask, only the cousins will appreciate that one), and at least 30 Pakistanis, give or take some non-English speaking international students my dad would find at Syracuse University and load into his Mazda MPV. None of these things were present at my in-laws’ and instead, they had stuff like turkey and mashed potatoes. What’s that about?

The first year was sheer culture shock. No one playing the harmonium, no one speaking Urdu, no one showing up two hours late. To be quite frank, I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I just sort of followed the crowd. I woke up, ate breakfast and watched the parade. No one rushed me to shower and get ready, no one made me clean the house in anticipation for company…I just laid on the floor by the fireplace and snuggled with Kaylee (my dog who Brian’s parents adopted a few years ago). Then I helped make Thanksgiving dinner. Should I rush? No, not at all—why rush? It’s just the 6 of us having a leisurely family Thanksgiving. No wonder everyone loves this holiday! After dinner, I joined Kaylee (again) near the the Libby-shaped impression in the carpet and fell asleep (again) while watching a movie. It was glorious.

When we were engaged, we did spend one Thanksgiving with my family, and to be fair, I think the culture shock for Brian was much, much more jarring. Have you seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding? You know the scene when Ian comes into the family’s Easter party at the restaurant and they all bombard him at once? I’m not joking, it was exactly like that. Except the Pakistanis are louder, more plentiful, and the foyer at my parents’ is smaller than that restaurant. You do the math. It wasn’t pretty. And yet he still married me...

Thanksgiving in the Massey Family is an international affair. For the first 10-15 years of the annual Massey Thanksgiving, my mom made all of the traditional foods. Then they started dying off – no stuffing in 1995, no turkey in 1997, and finally, around 1999, we saw our last bowl of mashed potatoes sit untouched in the buffet line, jealous of the attention the basmati rice was getting. And that was it, curry powder officially took over and the only semblance of traditional thanksgiving left was the pumpkin pie (we Pakis love our pumpkin pie – Americans got that one right).

This year we’ll be starting our own tradition. Last Thanksgiving we said that if we bought a house in ’06, we would host Thanksgiving in ’06. And we did, so we are! It should be interesting. First of all, we haven’t eaten meat, or cooked it for that matter, in about 4 months, so we will see how the bird comes out (we tried to convince Brian’s parents to go with a Tofurkey but the idea wasn’t exactly met with enthusiasm…can you blame them?). Also, we still have a small and rather wobbly round kitchen table, so we have officially decided to bring the patio table, yes, I said patio table, in for our feast. For some reason even though we can only eat outside like 2 days out of the year because of the weather in upstate New York, our patio table is about 3 times the size of our kitchen table. So that should be interesting too.

We’re excited to start to blend our families’ time-honored traditions, and make some of our own. We will definitely be making traditional food, and I will definitely be napping on the floor with Kaylee (if she survives the drive up here – sorry Caroline, but Kaylee’s like 25 years old and this may be her last Thanksgiving). We (me, Amber, and Mom Howe) will also go shopping around 5 am on Black Friday—yes, we’re “those people”—and meet the guys for breakfast around 9. As for the rest, we’ll have to see how it all unfolds – I will of course keep you posted.

posted by Libby @ 11:25 AM