Turkey-in-Law, Step-Cranberries and Half-Pumpkin Pie

So long ago now that I can’t remember how or when it happened, my husband of 25 years laid claim to Thanksgiving. In a family of strong women and culinarily gifted men, it was a preemptively sentimental strike. At least we would not haggle over the locale of the meal. It would be at our little white house in West Los Angeles--that was the one and only given--and all family members were welcome with their dishes of choice (subject, of course, to general family approval).

Back then, Thanksgiving dinner included my four stepsons, a girlfriend or two of theirs, my own sister, my mother and her suitor of decades and sometimes my father, my stepmother, my stepsister, her boyfriend at the time and my half brother (son of my father and stepmother) who, we once figured, in a moment of high-spirited decoding of the family tree, was the half-step-uncle-in-law of my husband’s four boys even though he was younger than any of them.

That this spill of people all got along, despite the divorces and the wounds that some obviously had caused others, struck some people as weird, to say the least. Outsiders looking in--particularly people I would meet from other parts of the country--found us too trendy, too obviously California. Where else could such a Thanksgiving take place but here amid the sunshine and palm trees, a place where people weren’t even rigorous enough--were just too laid-back--to hold a good grudge and where someone was fully capable of saying “pass the cranberries, please” to someone across the table who a few years earlier had broken his or her heart.

That was then and now is now and other families, for better or worse, have caught up with mine. The divorce rate has skyrocketed and many an American child will be sitting down this Thanksgiving with steps and halves and live-in lovers. In short, the American family ain’t what it used to be. Only 3% now conform to the postwar ideal of breadwinner dad and stay-at-home mom. Three percent.

While some bemoan the new reality, the more realistic try to reckon with it. There’s no going back. Women who like and need their jobs aren’t suddenly going to stay home. Unhappily married people are not going to stay tethered. The question then becomes: If adults come apart, can they do it with grace and good humor, maintaining cordial, even warm relations with one another for the sake of the children they have put on the earth?

That’s what my parents did. That’s what my husband and his ex-wife did. That’s what my sister’s husband and his ex-wife did. Yes, my sister also married a divorced man with a couple of children and that added, over the years, to the Thanksgiving logistics. Would all four come down from San Francisco or just my sister and her husband? Later, there was a baby of their own, my treasured niece, and more recently, a scrappy pound dog who goes wherever they go.

This year, that group is staying up north. But all my stepsons and their four wives and their own children--there are five grandchildren now--will be at our Thanksgiving table. There will be a couple of in-laws, my oldest son’s wife’s parents. And, of course, my mother and her forever suitor. My father and his group have decided to go to the snow. But we’re picking up another exploded nuclear family, an old friend--separated this year from his wife of long standing--and his sister and her husband, who all are feeling a little unmoored.

We are survivors of broken families and reconstituted families, of love lost and found, and as we settle over our massive meal, critiquing every bite with good-natured competition, as is the family’s wont, there is no question that we are no longer trendsetters and that all over America, families like ours will be doing the same.