happy holidays

since justin and i will both be out of town and apart from each other on thanksgiving, we had our own private thanksgiving at home yesterday. this is our sixth thanksgiving together, and it was the first time i gave in and bought a tofurkey. i have to say, for not being turkey, it was fantastic. texture and taste were both exceptional. the only drawback was that it didn't emit any juices with which to make gravy; i made a mushroom and onion gravy which under other circumstances would have been fine but as a substitute for turkey gravy sucked, well, turkey balls.

do turkeys have balls?

we decided, since it was just us, to not go too overboard but to concentrate on what we love. so our menu was:

• tofurkey and stuffing, with onions and mushrooms and carrots
• skins-on garlic mashed potatoes
• mushroom and onion gravy
• sweet potato praline casserole
• steamed broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and green beans
• crescent rolls (for tradition, of course)
• sparkling cranberry juice (because neither of us really likes cranberry sauce)
• french silk pie

i know french silk isn't very thanksgiving-y, but my co-worker's son is in a culinary program, and his school bakes pies throughout the holidays for sale, and while they offered the traditional holiday favorites, they also do french silk, which i had tasted last week and found to be the most perfect pie ever in the history of the universe. so we ordered a french silk for thanksgiving. we can have pumpkin or pecan any time.

so everyone talks about how hard the holidays are after a loss, which i always thought was just so much bullshit. i was wrong. yesterday sucked the aforementioned turkey balls, too. something that's been simmering between us for ages just exploded yesterday. it was one of those horrible times when we contemplated whether we should stay together. for the record, we decided in the affirmative, but the process of making that decision was horribly painful.

and then before dinner it occurred to me that we were going to sit down at a dinner traditionally preceded by a recitation of those things for which everyone is thankful that year. what could i say? i'm thankful i knew my son in utero and got to hold his increasingly colder body for a few minutes?

we decided to get hans's box down from the shelf and put him on the table for dinner. in this respect, it's probably better that this dinner was private; i can't imagine anyone else with whom we normally would have shared thanksgiving being comfortable with our dead baby's ashes forming the centerpiece for the dinner table.

i've been wanting to decorate his box for ages but haven't done it. we started thinking last night about what we could do to dress him up for dinner. stickers were too permanent. i thought about gluesticking on some fall leaves, but that didn't seem right. in the end, we taped on the monkey from his soft calendar we found in belgium last year. it was just right.

i'm thankful for justin. i am thankful i knew hans for a little while in a little way, even if what came after i don't appreciate. i'm thankful for friends and family who love me and try to understand, even if they don't. i'm thankful for our home, which i love even if it frustrates me. i'm thankful to have survived this year. now let's finish it and move on to 2006.