Turkey transfer averted

When I signed off last night, I was still unsure if my oven would open today.

Things looked dire this morning when Joe told me that after he came in last night, he yanked on the handle a couple of times and it fell off. And the oven still refused to open. I couldn't be angry with him because I had pulled on the handle myself, only not as hard.

This morning I talked to Deb about bringing the turkey there. I had it all ready to go, and she was preheating her oven, when Jim came by to perform a last-ditch investigation.

He fiddled with this and that and still, it looked like the oven would not succumb.

"It's frustrating, isn't it?" Joe asked.

Jim wasn't ready to give up, and suddenly, a Thanksgiving miracle happened. The door opened! We all high-fived, and we called the turkey transfer off. Jim said it had something to do with the lock being slightly out of position. Whew.

It was kind of hard to open with the handle missing, but two small end pieces remained to pull on. The fate of the oven, and of the attached broken microwave, is a problem for another day.

I puttered around doing a few things such as fixing the flower arrangements, getting down the serving dishes and getting out my mother's silver serving pieces, with some jobs remaining such as ironing the tablecloth so that Katie could set the table.

I took my time eating a bagel and reading the paper.

Maddie needed to be walked, so I took her out in the early afternoon, not checking the time. We went around the lake twice, talking to people along the way. When I got back home, Ben was at the door. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" he asked. "They're coming in half an hour!"

What? I actually did not have any idea what time it was. I thought it was 2:30, but it was an hour later.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm a moron."

"Do you expect us to disagree with you?" someone asked.

"No, but I figure if I criticize myself first, then nobody else will be able to," I said.

"Actually," Jim said to Joe, "I think she really didn't know what time it was."

If we were married, this situation might have led to a fight. Sometimes being divorced and friendly is so much easier.

Anyway, the kids and Jim finished up while I changed. Deb, Charlotte and their black lab, Mary Margaret, arrived just a couple of minutes before I came down.

The turkey was delicious, as was everything else. We were all in good spirits.

We gave thanks for health, family, friends and of course good food and a warm, safe place to live. Ben gave the "Al Gordon" speech in honor of my father, who loved to say that despite our country's flaws, it is still the best country in the world.

If the oven were a person, it should have given thanks that we did not beat it to pieces before it finally gave in.

How not to get ready for Thanksgiving

Once you get comfortable on the floor, it's hard to get up.

On the day before Thanksgiving, this is what you do:

First, you get up early...and play tennis. Then, you sit down on the floor and play with the dog.

Then you get comfortable.

Eventually you get up. You run a mile with your daughter. You mention that the dog needs her walk now, but there are no takers. So you walk another mile with the dog.

In the meantime, you decide to clean the oven for the first time in you don't know how many years. You follow the self-cleaning instructions: set both dials to clean, set stop time for three hours and move the bar on the oven from unlocked to locked. After about 45 minutes you decide the smell hurts your throat, so you cancel the cycle. You let the oven cool down and unlock the door.

The door refuses to open. You figure that it wanted to wait the whole three-hour cycle, so you wait until three hours has passed and try again. No luck. You ask son (Joe) to try. He pulls hard on the door, to no avail. You set it on a shorter cycle so it can finish, and then you try again. No deal.

Then you do what any smart-thinking mother would do: You take daughter and hightail it out of there, going to Northampton to do errands and get a Starbucks. When you return, son has read about the problem on the internet, where it says to turn the power switch on and off. No luck. You decide to set it again for another three hours so it can complete the whole cycle without feeling cheated and will then hopefully feel generous enough to unlock itself.

This is where things stand now, at 10 p.m. To my credit, I did do all the shopping yesterday, except for forgetting all of my knives at the butcher shop, where they can be sharpened for free. Joe, who came home Sunday, returned and got them today.

Thanksgiving dinner will take place here, oven or no oven. It will be the three kids and me, our friend Deb and her daughter Charlotte, and Jim, my ex-husband.

Deb, who lives down the street, said we could cook the turkey there if need be. We could use the microwave for reheating Deb's stuffing and Jim's sweet potato casserole...if the microwave worked.

If we do have to make a few trips to Deb's and back, it will end up making a good story.

Thanksgiving came quickly. It wasn't too long ago that I mourned my empty nest when Katie went to college. I spent part of last year dreading her departure, only to realize, after the initial shock, that I was fine on my own. And now, suddenly, they're all back.

Ben rolled in tonight. Katie got here yesterday, and, as I said, Joe came on Sunday. Tonight we had pizza and salad in the den. At one point, everyone was talking at once. The dog, oblivious, snored on the couch. I soaked it up.

They each went their separate ways after dinner. In order to continue not getting ready, I am sitting next to the dog writing this. Next I'm going to check for last night's episode of "The Good Wife."

Then I'll gather up my courage to see if the oven opens.

Whether it does or doesn't, it promises to be a blessed day.

Remembering. Wondering. Thankful.

My mother, Lynne, arranging flowers from my garden four years ago.

Two years ago today, my mother died after a short battle with lung cancer.

Tomorrow, of course, is Thanksgiving.

On Thanksgiving two years ago, I was consumed by grief and by guilt, while also being buoyed by all of the love around me, from my children, family and friends.

Quintessential New Yorkers, my parents always came to our house for Thanksgiving; they loved the mood of the holiday in New England. My mother, with help from the kids, set the table, turning it into a work of art. Distrustful of Western Massachusetts florists, my mother brought a centerpiece from New York.

My mother loved getting dressed up to go out to dinner with my father, Alfred. She also loved wearing sweaters and slacks for Thanksgiving in the country, always with flair.

After that became cumbersome, we ordered the centerpiece from the local florist. When it arrived, my mother sighed, shook her head, took it apart and redid it with her usual flair. She cleaned the silver and ironed the tablecloth, despite my protestations that she needn’t bother. Cleaning up loose stems and leftover silver polish, I got a little annoyed, and then guilty about feeling annoyed. I was glad that she was there, and I had no idea how I'd do it without her.

I could be annoying too. I insisted on going for my traditional Thanksgiving Day run before putting the turkey in. We ate late, so when I got back from my run I felt that I had all the time in the world to stretch and lollygag. Inevitably, my mother would say, “We better put that bird in.”
Yes, Mom, if you say so.

The last-minute preparations were usually chaotic, but eventually we sat down to the feast. My father gave a short speech about being thankful to be in America, the best country in the world despite its problems.

My mother came alone for four years after my father died in 2002. But two years ago, she couldn’t get out of her bed. For most of that fall, Diane and I had taken turns going to New York to be with mom, first in the hospital and then at home under hospice care and with full-time aides. The once-lovely apartment building where we grew up was in shambles, having been caught in the wave of classy co-op developments in New York.


In top photo, Diane, left, and I stand in front of the apartment building where we grew up.
In bottom photo, me, Mom and Diane leave the building for some sort of ladies' outing in 1964.

Working around the mostly elderly rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants who could not be made to leave, the developers tore out walls and replaced old pipes, making a big mess and not cleaning up after themselves. Big fat rats scurried up and down the back staircase. There was debris everywhere. And did I say there was no heat? It was illegal, but they chose to pay the fine rather than to spend the time and money to work faster to get the heat going. They did give the tenants space heaters, certainly not enough to heat a whole apartment. My mother spent much of a month curled up under heavy quilts; the one time she did try to get up, it was so cold she just wanted to go back to bed.

I last saw my mother two days before Thanksgiving. I told her I would bring the kids down for the holiday, and we could eat on stack tables in her room. She begged me not to. She wanted to picture me in my own house, not hanging around her bed. I stayed home, planning to turn around and go back down on Monday. She died on Sunday. I cried my heart out, wishing I had gone. But my cousin Joanne and others told me I had given her the gift of letting her be the parent. She had asked me to stay home, and I did what she asked.

I was so attached to both of my parents that I often wondered if I could survive without them. I thought that somehow, when they died, the earth would open up and swallow me. They both lived into their 80s, lived good lives and were sick only for a short time. What more could you ask? No matter how old they are, you want more.

Before my father died, I remember asking a childhood friend how she coped with her father’s death. “You don’t get over it,” she said. “But you get used to it.”

I got used to it. My sister and I leaned on our mother, on each other, on our children and on a whole lot of loved ones. I ran a half marathon. I played good tennis. I did yoga. I drank a lot of water, took care of myself, got plenty of rest. I spent extra time with my mother.

I didn’t get swallowed up by the earth.

I did get cancer. After each parent’s death.

My initial leukemia diagnosis came just about a year after my father’s death.
I relapsed less than a year after my mother died.

With the relapse, was it something I had breathed in from the construction? I doubt you could make a direct connection.

Was it grief, which, both times, created a vulnerability causing cancer to pounce?

The straight scientific answer is that, no, loss of a parent cannot cause cancer.

Still. I am left wondering if there was a relationship. But what happened happened, and now I must focus on the present.

Tomorrow, Joe will put the extra board in the table and help put the tablecloth on evenly. Katie will set the table the way my mother taught her. We’ll take out the turkey that Katie made years ago out of a tiny upside down flowerpot for the body, construction-paper feathers and pipe-cleaner legs. I’ll clean the silver (sigh) and try my best to make a decent flower arrangement, hoping my mother’s hands will guide me. We’ll prepare a small feast. A few friends will come. Ben will deliver what his annual “Al Gordon speech,” in my father’s place.

We will be thankful. We will try to think of my parents’ presence, not of their absence.