The Saunders Family

GRAMMY — I drewed you a turkey! It is on the FRIDGE. It is the BIGGEST one. The other ones I drewed for Mommy and Daddy and Tommy and Sophie and Grampy. They are LITTLEr. I love you Grammy. I am gonna sit NEXT to you. Mom says I can if I am GOOD. I will be GOOD. Mostly.

Mom — I have, for the last nine Novembers, gotten on a plane on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. My kids think it's the law. My wife thinks it's the closest thing I have to a religion. They are both right. Your kitchen on Thanksgiving morning, with the radio on and the windows fogged and you in the doorway with a mug, is the room I picture when people ask me what home means. I will keep flying in until I can't. Then I will drive.

Carol — I have, over thirty-five years, learned exactly two things about your Thanksgiving. (1) Do not, under any circumstances, try to help with the gravy. (2) Always, always bring the cranberry. The first I learned in 1991 and I am still slightly bitter. The second I learned in 1992, which is when you told me, kindly and exactly: "Pat, you bring the cranberry, I'll do the rest." Thirty-four cranberries later, I am still bringing it. Pour me a glass. Sit down. The table is gorgeous.

GRANDMA!! I am in charge of the rolls this year!! Mom said I can put them in the basket AND walk them around the table to EVERYONE and they have to TAKE one even if they don't want one because it's a TRADITION now. I LOVE Thanksgiving and I love YOU. Your kitchen smells AMAZING. Also can I have a roll before dinner please.

Aunt Carol — I am, once again, the one who flew in from Phoenix and brought the side dish nobody asks for. It is, again, the green-bean casserole my mom used to make. I make it every year because she made it every year and because you, for sixteen Novembers now, have given me a place at the table and a serving spoon and a corner of counter to assemble it on. Nobody finishes the casserole. You always take a second helping. I see you, Aunt Carol. I see you and I love you for it.

Carol — my first Thanksgiving in this kitchen was in 2009. I was twenty-four and terrified, and you, within five minutes of me arriving, put a tea towel in my hand and said "good — you can dry, I'll wash." I have, in seventeen years, never felt anything other than welcomed at this table. My own mother, who you never met, would have loved you. She would have brought wine. I am bringing wine on her behalf. Thank you for the seventeen Thanksgivings. We are at twenty-five and counting.

Carol-bear — sixty-eight years of Thanksgivings together. The one in 1962 when we were eight and four and Mom let us eat in the den with the dog. The one in 1989 when you hosted for the first time and I sat in your dining room and cried because you had grown into the woman I always knew you would be. The one last year when Bob said grace and we both looked across the table at the same time and knew exactly what the other was thinking. I am here, Carol. I will always be here, on this Thursday, in November, in your kitchen, until I am not. And then you will have my chair.

Carol, Bob — twenty-two Thanksgivings at this table now. I came the first year because Margaret invited me and I had no family in this country. I have come every year since because, somewhere between the second year and the fifth, you stopped introducing me as "Meg's friend" and started introducing me as "our Lena." That word — our — was, and remains, the single kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. The grandkids call me Aunt Lena. I have a chair. I am at the table. I am, by every measure that matters, family.

Carol and Bob — eighteen Novembers I have said grace at your table. Eighteen times I have looked around at the faces in your dining room — the new ones each year, the older ones each year — and thought: this is what we are all, in our different ways, trying to build. A long table, in a warm room, with the people we love at it, and one more chair than we strictly need. Grace, this year, will be brief, and grateful, and from the heart. From all of us at St Andrew's — thank you for the table.

Grandma — I did the place cards this year. You said "oh you don't have to, dear" and I did anyway. I have been watching you do them at the kitchen table on the Wednesday night for sixteen Thanksgivings and I wanted to know what it felt like to write everyone's name down and decide where they go. It feels like love. I put Uncle Mark next to me because he makes me laugh and I put Tommy next to Dad because they're going to talk about the game anyway. I hope that's okay. I love you so much, Grandma.