Seattle Thanksgiving

“We’re making brownies now and we’re licking the batter from the bowl. We have 4 minutes until we can taste that,” Pinkie says of the lemon bars baking in the oven. 

“No.” Annie says.

“Like 9 minutes?” she asks.

“No, they won’t be cooled off yet.”

“Like 50?” she persists.

“Mmm hmm…” Annie caves, absentmindedly.

I’m sitting at the booth table in the kitchen on Florentia Street, in Seattle, Washington. Annie and Pinkie lick brownie batter from a bowl, and Cait tools around in the kitchen. We’ve  just declared Thanksgiving Stone Soup our new tradition, inspired by 1^st grade; Pinkie picked the rock from Cait’s yard.  Pinkie started too early, but the rest of us patiently went around the table, said what we were thankful for, mostly being together: friendship, food, family.  It’s scary, starting fresh in a new town, but Cait did it anyway, moved up a few months ago, and being here IS better, for her. And now we are here, are all together.

Cait says, “I question myself if whether we should open another bottle of champagne because we might want more tomorrow night but then I realized, we can just buy more tomorrow!” Pinkie thinks this is fortuitous, for now she gets to be the foil remover. When she’s done she counts down along with the timer - the lemon bars are almost done. Cait times things right, so the bottle pops as Pinkie and the timer hit one.

We drink champagne from jars - a long way from the holiday meals of my childhood.  I stopped doing my traditional Thanksgiving a few years ago. This time last year Annie and I had Thanksgiving dinner at the Evita Café in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I don’t remember what we ate, but I do remember exactly where we sat, and how I felt at the time. The memory of it is rich, special. The year before that Melissa, Annie, Pinkie and I ate at the Disneyland character buffet, in Goofy’s Kitchen, I think. That was the first year after Dad had died, and things have changed since then.

Now that my holiday time is so rigidly carved out, Pinkie is with us on alternating Thanksgivings and Christmases, and we make the best of that time with or without her. With her, we go places in the U.S. There’s only so much time before Annie is off to college, we need to take advantage of the chance to make memories together, forge that sisterly bond.  Without her, Annie and I need to go to the far away places we can’t take Pinkie.

This year Pinkie will be with her dad at Christmas, and for Thanksgiving, the girls and I chose to road trip up to Seattle; we’re staying with Cait. We stopped at places from my childhood along the way, and I told the girls about Uncle Red, Grammy Adams, my Dad, and everything I remember, which isn’t much.  The nostalgia I feel is for the childhood my Dad had. Today, I remember Thanksgivings in Stockton. We’d show up early, sit around and watch TV, bored while the adults worked. I remember watching the Michael Jackson Thriller music video in my grandmother’s living room, the swinging door in the guest bathroom, the moth ball smell, the grapefruit tree in the backyard, the noontime sound of ice clinking in glass, and my grandfather’s whistle as he made himself a vodka and soda. I remember Lenox china, Waterford crystal, a gorgeous table with fancy silver and cloth napkins. I remember that we didn't start off with anything special, like grace or thanks or anything like that. I remember instead that Dad hogged the gravy and we all ate quickly over a meal that took hours to prepare. Today, what I remember is that it wasn’t fun, but we pretended it was.

I hear Cait and Annie and Pinkie laughing so loud I’d swear they are hyperventilating. Her roommate has turned up the music really loud in the living room. My guess is the sound of them having that much fun in the other room is a real distraction to anyone not like us. The door is closed, but they are loud. This Thanksgiving feast of friendship and laughter has been going strong for four days straight.

On the table, melted ice cream and root beer floats in a bowl. There’s also a bottle of Freixenet Brut, and a partially eaten round pan of lemon bars with three dirty spoons – we ate straight from the pan.  The brownies on the table have cooled by now. Cait pops over and scoops some brownie from the pan. We were civilized about the pumpkin pie though – we each had a quarter of it, with whipped cream, on dessert plates, while the lemon bars baked, just after we jumped in front of the troll under Fremont Bridge, rode the Seattle Waterfront Ferris Wheel, and after Stone Soup, the main course. We saw some folks all dressed up in expensive wool coats, sequins, and hats… just back from a nice meal in a fancy restaurant. Compared with my lemon-bar dotted jeans, dusty boots, gloves, scarf, jacket, Target-sweater, I realized our shiny pretty things were the sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks from a day of discovery, play, adventure, action. 

Cait seeds a pomegranate in the kitchen, hoodie on her head, she's about to do dishes I think. She takes some seeds into the girls, and sternly tells them not to spill them anywhere that touches Pinkie’s feet. They stink, you know.

Thanksgiving Day Stone Soup

SalliAnne, Annie, Pinkie, Cait 

Stock:

• Rock from Cait’s yard
• Two teaspoons mushroom bullion
• Celery stalks
• Hunks of 2-3 small carrots

When the house starts to smell pretty delicious, pull out the mushy stock veggies, and throw in the following:

• Sliced mushrooms
• 4 oz. jar of water-marinated artichoke hearts
• Diced potatoes: two red, one Idaho

Set the flame to simmer. Put Disney’s Hercules on Cait’s computer, marvel at how much like Samantha Hercules is, in the strength department. Take a nap, if you feel like it. 

When Cait comes home prepare tortellini according to package instructions. While that’s cooking, dice some avocado for garnish and whittle a few celery stalks and carrots into pot. Then toss in some diced sliced barbeque pork (Chinese style), and ask Cait to toss her stuff in: two cherry tomatoes and a pinch of African cucumber.

Ladle the soup into the bowls and add avocado garnish while the others pour their own beverages into glass jars. Sit down, give thanks, eat, talk, laugh. Get more soup. Distract whomever has the stone, and steal it from their bowl. Play “hide the stone” in Cait’s room. Laugh until your insides hurt.