Thanks giving.

When we were kids, we spent Thanksgiving with the Bidgoods, either at home or, alternating years, at their house in Dayton Ohio. Before my sister was born, the Bidgoods didn’t have any children so it was just my brother and me and adults. My parents and the Bidgoods had been close friends since they were newlyweds and lived in the same apartment building in Waukegan, Illinois, and they sustained their friendship with this Thanksgiving tradition, which we all loved and looked forward to. Dad and LeRoy Bigood shared in interest in aviation. Verna had been a schoolteacher and she was “educated,” a quality my parents, neither of them college graduates, placed a high, almost mystical, value on. LeRoy and Verna both chain-smoked, their humor was a little sarcastic, and they always included the kids in the conversation. Verna could be caustic at times, or so it seemed to me at that age, but I loved her. The meal was traditional, except that Verna, beside the mandatory pumpkin, made what she called an apple custard pie (I think sometimes it’s called French apple), that I had mixed feelings about. It was unusual and sophisticated to my aspirational little boy mind, but to be honest I really preferred Mom’s more traditional apple pie. I would have a slice of each.

Around the time my sister was born, the Bidgoods adopted a child, then another, then Verna, who’d been unable to get pregnant, did, and eventually as my brother and I got older and eventually moved on, my brother into the Navy, I to college and then New York, the Thanksgiving tradition dissipated. I feel a little sad not to remember if my parents and sister, who is six years younger than me, continued to spend Thanksgiving with the Bidgoods; for me it’s a memory that sits squarely in the mists of my childhood.

I think of Thanksgiving with the Bidgoods as sort of the ur-Thanksgiving. The air outside is getting sharp, the kitchen is a little too warm, the day is long, lots of conversation, laughing and conversation, and then a thrilling moment when everything is on the table untouched, the turkey, sagey stuffing, mashed potatoes with tons of butter and cream, gravy for it all, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, the amazing abundance of it.

Thanksgiving the two years I was in college at Miami, was bus trips to New York, marathon Broadway weekends, and Thanksgiving dinner at Tavern on the Green. Later, in the mid-80s, with Brian my first longtime boyfriend, we had big dinners for friends in our Fort Greene apartment with the kitchen that consisted of a sink and stove crammed into what in the original brownstone had been a dressing room over the stairs. (There was a hole in the floor behind the stove, and once our cat Sparky climbed back there and jumped through the hole onto the stove in the apartment below, scaring the crap out of the elderly Chinese mother-in-law of our landlord who was cooking at the time. A couple years later, in an unrelated incident, the elderly woman’s Rottweiler mauled Sparky to death in the backyard.) Our fridge was in the bedroom. One fall my sister was in New York for an internship, living a few blocks away with a friend. We cooked for two days and between the two of us managed to get pretty close to Mom and Verna’s version of all the traditional dishes. That was the year we had 25 for dinner.

Jay, my partner through, roughly, my 30s, and I hosted a couple of small Thanksgivings in our tiny studio on East 10th St. for stragglers and orphan friends. I remember a staggeringly good chocolate cake that one guest brought, which I ate too much of and had to lie immobile on the futon for half an hour because I thought I might actually explode and die.

Years later, when I was living in Austin — Jay and I had separated but were living in a big house with friends and my life was more untethered to anything than at any other time and there have been untethered times … oh, it’s too much back story for right now — I made a pot roast instead of turkey, and we played an epic air hockey tournament with friends that I still recall as one of the sweetest moments of my life.

I’m thankful for it all.

Now I’m older and married and probably as stable as I am capable of being and we spend Thanksgiving alternating years with my family and my husband’s family. His family Thanksgiving has moved from his parents’ home to his brother and sister-in-law’s and my family has moved to my sister’s family’s home. The year after Mom died, my sister and I made Thanksgiving dinner in her kitchen for the last time. Soon after, my father cleaned out most of Mom’s kitchen stuff, not keeping much more than he needs for the simple meals he heats up and eats. My sister is vegan now, but she gamely roasts a big turkey at her house for the carnivores. We’ll be there next year.

This year we’re with my husband’s family in North Carolina. The meal, mostly prepared by C’s brother but everyone helped, was traditional and delicious. No apple custard pie, but there was pear-cranberry. I did very little of the cooking, but I made the gravy, a task which has a high satisfaction to effort ratio.