Well, here we all are. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. What does it mean to you?

We’ve had a year, haven’t we? Thanksgiving means it’s winding down so maybe now we can all take time to enjoy a holiday or two with friends and family?

It’s funny. I don’t know that I have anything particularly profound to say, but when I woke up this morning, I was thinking about Thanksgivings past.

I remember Thanksgiving when I was really little. We went to my mother’s brother’s house. They were the ones that adopted our German Shepherd, Lily Marlene, when my parents decided she wasn’t right for them. Lilly had been given to them by friends of theirs who at the time basically lied about everything about the dog. They just wanted to get rid of her. Lily didn’t like being a city dog. I think it was as simple as that and before us she had been a boy dog and I think she missed that. Lily loved my uncle so one day she went home with him, and she had an amazing life with my cousins and my Aunt and Uncle. And among other things, she became a boy dog once again.

I remember Thanksgiving at this their house. The table was packed and it was a small enough house that it got very warm with the oven and all the people. But it was nice and my Aunt was a good cook. She was also a very warm and welcoming woman and loved kids.

Also when I was little, I remember one particular Thanksgiving when my father’s sister and her family were living in a house they rented in Paoli. I think my paternal grandfather was even still alive at this point.

The house in Paoli doesn’t exist anymore. Shortly after my uncle got relocated by his company to either Florida or Cincinnati (I forget which), that house was eventually sold again and torn down. Because my uncle was living a corporate life with an insurance company he and his family moved fairly frequently when I was little.

The house in Paoli was off of Route 30. I remember it either was off of a private road or like a farm road and it was on the right when you were headed west on Route 30/Lancsster Avenue.

Paoli was still a lot of open space farmland then. Even along Route 30. This was maybe 1968 or so and I remember that because my sister was so little. I remember the house though, and it was a beautiful old farmhouse and it was big  and had great woodwork. I believe it was maybe a Victorian era farmhouse if not earlier, but I was too little to know the difference or precise age. I do remember it was white. It had a big porch and black shutters. There was a barn off to the side that obviously my aunt and uncle didn’t use except to pull a car in, and across from them there were still fields. And pretty big trees. 

My uncle is Cuban, and when I was little, his mother was still alive and there. She was very tiny, dressed in widow’s black clothes, and pretty much spoke Spanish to her son. That was the Thanksgiving where I first had black eyed peas. They were one of the side dishes. I was seated at the children’s table, which was set up in the hall at the base of the front stairs. The house had a beautiful staircase, and I still remember looking into the dining room, which was lovely with a beautiful table and candlelight.

Then at some point as we were growing up, we moved to the suburbs from the city and my parents good friends moved as well to Bethesda, Maryland. We started the tradition of state swapping Thanksgiving. Some years we went there, and some years they came here. I liked it better when we went there because the kids could go into Georgetown that weekend after Thanksgiving Day. Also because the mother in this equation, we’ll call her Mrs. C, was an amazing cook. She also never treated the kids like kids. I don’t know if you remember growing up, but you just had some of the adults that basically talked down to you, and like my parents, she spoke to us normally.

I remember being in the kitchen with Mrs. C as she was preparing Thanksgiving. We were all put to work, but you didn’t mind and it was a pretty big open kitchen and it extended into a family room. She used to make giant turkeys and they were just like perfectly basted things of beauty and oh they smelled so good!

One of the Thanksgivings when it was my parents turn to host, we decided to try eating out, because when this family came, it was a lot more people than could necessarily fit comfortably in our dining room, although we did do it a lot of the time. (Besides, if my mother could get out of cooking, she would.)

So this one Thanksgiving, we went to a restaurant in Radnor called The Greenhouse. People today would know this location as 333 Bellrose, which was owned by a friend of mine until a couple of years ago when he sold it. My high school friend opened it originally in 1999.

The Greenhouse Restaurant was owned by a Mary Bentley. Before she opened a restaurant there, according to Main Line Media News :

….Between 1953 and 1975 it was a gift shop and garden center called Radnor House. Part of it is literally a converted stable built in 1769 and although it sounds like a joke, local historians say that George Washington’s horse actually slept there – not George himself, but his horse.

In 1975 Mary Mitchell Bentley, of Bryn Mawr, had survived a traumatic divorce and opened the first restaurant there, the Greenhouse. She had no previous experience in the restaurant business.

“I did it because there was nothing else I could do but cook,” Mary told us 25 years ago. “I could not even type and I had never held a job outside the home in my life. I had to go to work to pay the bills though and I was terrified to go on a job interview, which I had never done, so I figured I’d open a restaurant.”

Despite this less than auspicious track record, Bentley managed to develop the Greenhouse into one of the Main Line’s most elegant and successful restaurants for two decades….After Mary’s departure, the property was converted into another restaurant (Carolina’s) and then another one (Oyster Bar) which both lasted a little longer than a Caesar salad…..

Why so much on The Greenhouse and its history? Because it was an amazing restaurant. Today, if a restaurant like that actually existed, it would be amazing and what Mrs. Bentley did for Thanksgiving precisely was create your Thanksgiving dinner at her restaurant.

You would order an entire Thanksgiving dinner, including your own small turkey. When you had Thanksgiving there, you didn’t feel as much that you were in a restaurant, but it was like you were in somebody’s home. It was really terrific. I am not sure if any other restaurant in the area does it the way they used to. Being able to get in there for one of the Thanksgiving dinners was a big deal. And you got leftovers. 

I remember other Thanksgivings that we spent with my father’s sister and her family once they were permanently back in Philadelphia. Those were more formal Thanksgivings and not particularly warm and fuzzy because my father and his sister did not really get along. It was just a beautiful but cold house and having dinner with a bunch of equally cold people.

My aunt’s children, my cousins, were not friendly really towards us, they were polite… and you always got the feeling that they felt oddly superior to any of the rest of us. And it was a shame because my aunt had a beautiful house in Chestnut Hill and I loved her living room and dining room. Those Thanksgivings while they lasted also included my father’s mother, my grandmother as she moved in with them when Pop Pop died. These are the Thanksgiving memories that are like the echoes and empty rooms.

There was also one Thanksgiving or Christmas that we spent in Ellicott City Maryland, where one of my father’s cousins lived. They most had this amazing Victorian house that they restored and it was great. The holiday was also great because they were always warm and loving

Other Thanksgivings over the years were spent with friends and other family like my cousin Suzy. She and her family settled in Newtown, Bucks County, which was not too far from where some of my mother’s cousins and other aunts and uncles had lived .

Suzy was my mother’s brother’s oldest daughter. She was like a big sister to me and my sister. She had spent a lot of time with us growing up and when she got married, she actually got married out of my parents house in Society Hill and our parish, Old Saint Joseph’s.

I loved doing holidays with Suzy and her kids. She would also do things like have a Christmas caroling party in December and we would all go around her neighborhood in Newtown and we collectively had the worst voices, but we had so much fun. I used to go to the New Hope area flea markets with Suzy as I got older.

Sadly, Suzy is no longer with us, she died two years to the day after my father passed away.

Then eventually we were all doing other Thanksgivings. Sometimes in Philadelphia, or the Philadelphia area, and then after my sister and her family moved to New York, also up there.

I also have other memories of random Thanksgivings where I couldn’t get time off from work and had to work Black Friday. So I remember one year my parents went to Nee York to my sister’s and I went to Merion Cricket Club with my friend and her family because after everyone in that family stopped wanting to cook Thanksgiving, they started (like a lot of people) eating a club Thanksgiving dinner. Only the Thanksgiving meals at Merion never held a candle to the Old Greenhouse restaurant in Radnor. And you definitely didn’t have your own turkey.

I remember some Thanksgiving meals I didn’t like particularly which were in a prior life and a prior relationship where I would have to go to my ex’s sister’s in the Allentown area. And one reason why it was unpleasant is that is when my ex would have me as a captive audience in the car and would yell at me the entire way up. It was enough to give you holiday PTSD, and when you would get to his sister’s they would spend the entire Thanksgiving talking meanly about whoever wasn’t there, or about whomever was in the next room of her dark depressing town house.

And the ex’s sister had speckled brownish kind of Pfaltzgraff crockery plates that I thought were truly ugly, and they served the turkey to the table in giant tinfoil pans. I mean, it’s Thanksgiving. I get it people like to cook turkeys in disposable tinfoil pans, but you don’t bring those to the table. it’s a holiday. Bring out the dishes and platters. Maybe it’s just personal preference to me, but I always thought it was a waste. The best time I ever had there was the year his sister’s beagle got part of the turkey.

And it’s funny when we would go to his brother‘s house for a holiday, I would still get yelled at on the car ride up, but his sister-in-law and her mom really made an effort and said a beautiful table, and the house was just lovely and warm.

Those felt like the purgatory years. Thankfully, they came to an end. I don’t miss those years. They were neither super terrible or good. They were just a loop I was stuck in for a period of time.

Thanksgiving Day dinner is a meal I actually like cooking. It makes you crazy and it can be stressful, but I think it’s fun. I especially like it since I moved to Chester County because you can always get a fresh turkey easily.

I have enjoyed over the years, creating my own traditions. I like making cranberry sauce I like making chutney right before Thanksgiving when I have leftover green tomatoes and some apples and I love to bake. And one of the things I love best of all is ironing a vintage linen tablecloth, and setting a pretty table. We can’t take it with us so we might as well use our dishes etc. I really don’t like when people who have nice dishes and glasses and who don’t have the excuse of having small children, bring out the paper plates and plastic glasses. I think it’s kind of tacky.

Like any other holiday, it won’t necessarily be perfect. We don’t live a Hallmark Movie existence, after all.

We’ve had a year and now it’s time for the holidays. There’s always time for reflection and introspection as well. We should be grateful for the people we still have in our lives, and the ones who no longer are.

I go into the holidays missing a very important friend who died unexpectedly this summer. She would’ve been texting up a storm by now to find out what we were doing for Thanksgiving and what she was going to do, thousands of miles away. It makes me feel a little disconnected and right now kind of sad that the only conversations I will have with her about holidays going forward are just speaking into the air and wishing she was still here. I think going forward, I will probably always feel a little bittersweet, but I won’t have that sadness.

2024 has been a year of change for most of us, and I think it’s safe to say the future is uncertain in some regards. However, life goes on and a lot of what makes our lives our everyday lives doesn’t change. And we have to remember that.

I know there are some people who won’t be spending holidays this year with friends or family in some cases because of the election. There will always be more that unites us than divides us and we shouldn’t let political extremism on either side take over any further than it already has. And I’m not saying that because I’m good with the outcome of the election.

We don’t live in a Norman Rockwell illustration and we’re not the Waltons and John Boy won’t be necessarily home for Christmas, either. But the business of living has to be gotten on with. Life is never going to be completely static, nor should it be.

Some people tomorrow aren’t big fans of Thanksgiving for whatever reason, and I know some people who will be volunteering somewhere. It’s their way to give back. 

So whatever your jam is, I hope all of you out there have a happy Thanksgiving.