Thanksgiving and Sitting Down With Your Past

Every year around this time, some poor bird somewhere makes the news for escaping its fate. Usually it’s a farm upstate, sometimes a backyard coop in Queens. There’s always a photo — the turkey darting across a road, feathers flying, looking both ridiculous and determined. And for a moment, we all root for it. The great escapee.

Can’t say I blame him. Some years, we all want to escape Thanksgiving.

Not the food, of course. The food’s the easy part. It’s everything that comes with it — the noise, the expectations, the people who ask how you’ve been and then don’t really want to know. Gratitude is supposed to come naturally, but some years, it sticks in the throat. Some years, it feels like pretending.

I remember one Thanksgiving when I didn’t go home. Told everyone I had deadlines. Truth was, I just didn’t have the heart. Too many empty chairs, too many things unsaid. I spent the day with Chinese takeout and a movie I didn’t finish. And I told myself I was fine. Free, even. The turkey who got away.

But you can’t stay escaped forever. Not really. The world has a way of calling you back — to the table, to the memories, to the messy business of being thankful when you don’t feel like it.

These days, I try to show up. Not because everything’s perfect, but because it isn’t. Gratitude’s not a performance; it’s a truce. You sit down with your past, your regrets, your people — or their ghosts — and you pass the potatoes anyway.

So here’s to the turkey who escaped Thanksgiving — and to the rest of us who didn’t. May we all find a little grace in staying put.

— Walker

P.S. Before the holiday chaos kicks in, here’s a tasteful little mystery for you: The Lost Recipe: A Sweet Potato Pie Mystery — a Wordrow puzzle with a sweet streak and a sly one.