The Chicken Dance – Thanksgiving Edition

I don’t know if our Thanksgiving is better than yours, but ours is pretty good. Just sayin’. As long as my kids can remember, the tradition has been for Ben’s Aunt Mary and her family, along with friends we’ve known for a quarter of a century, to join us at our house for several days surrounding the feast. For a few fantastic years, Ben was in school Wednesday, and I was not. This meant that Phil and I could go Christmas shopping, go out for a nice lunch, go antique shopping. Whatever. Didn’t matter. We did it without children and it was glorious. Those days have passed. Ben now has the whole week off from school, he’s living large, and we scramble to be sure he is covered while we work. 

One thing that has always remained the same about this week is that people start trickling into town Wednesday afternoon. By suppertime, everyone is here and it is a wild time of talking, laughing, and catching up. Mary brings fruit, cheese, and mini pumpkin muffins. We usually make pizza or something equally communal for dinner. Dave makes us laugh until it hurts.

On Thanksgiving day, we all go about our assigned jobs. The girls make pumpkin pie. The parents complain about how late the girls got up, expecting to be granted oven space. Catherine makes the pecan pie and the sugar pie. All the men make the turkey, Rachid makes the mashed potatoes, Mary and Dave arm wrestle for who will make the stuffing and gravy, and I make a side dish that everyone considers dubious because I pick something new every year to try to shake things up. This crowd does not respond well to being shaken. Or stirred.

Between dinner and dessert on Thanksgiving day is Ben’s favorite part of the year. He drags out “Guesstures,” which is like a timed game of charades. We always play boys vs. girls, and we take turns youngest to oldest. Aunt Mary always helps Ben prep what he’s going to act out. Even if he doesn’t know the underlying word, he plays his part with gusto, and his results are about as good as anyone’s. Some things, like the tradition of “Guesstures,” can be counted on every year. Other things change.

One year, when the kids were in grade school, we decided to liven things up by serving b’stilla, a Moroccan delicacy. Knowing the kids would be disappointed by the lack of turkey, we roasted a chicken as a decoy bird, and Phil dubbed it a “small turkey.” (File it with “square chicken” under “Lies we tell our children.”) At a certain point during dinner, our nephew became suspicious, and questioned us at length. Somebody broke under interrogation, and he declared the entire meal “bogus.”

One year we moved all the living room furniture into the dining room and all the dining room furniture into the living room. I don’t know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

One of my favorite years was when Ben decided that we should do the chicken dance at irregular intervals throughout the entire meal. It was fantastic. His timing, as always, was impeccable. Somebody launching into a tirade about the problem with teenagers these days? Time for the chicken dance. Teenagers rolling their eyes because their parents are talking smack? Time for the chicken dance. Somebody going off on a political rant that leaves them frothing? Time for the chicken dance. Somebody trying to text an outsider about the bizarre conditions of their imprisonment at our dining table? Time for the chicken dance. 

I’m reasonably convinced that if Ben were appointed ambassador of world peace, he would whip us all into shape with a rousing round of the chicken dance. Problem solved.

May your Thanksgiving be filled with much chicken dancing!