Thanks­giv­ing approaches

“Drake: the Musi­cal” has reced­ed into the mists of time, car­ry­ing along with it the mem­o­ries of such dit­ties as “It’s Rain­ing Again in Green­wich” and the cam­paign song for Sir Fran­cis run­ning for May­or of Ply­mouth against Lord Kil­li­grew, whose famous refrain, “Thank you, Moth­er,” will live on in the minds of all of us who saw two, three or even four per­for­mances. It was such fun! Such a hap­py reminder of my own high-school days in musi­cals, that feel­ing of group effort, fel­low sup­port, admiration.

The play end­ed in tri­umph on Sat­ur­day night but I was­n’t even there, for two rea­sons: one, you could­n’t get a tick­et for love or mon­ey, and two, I was sick as a dog. I hard­ly ever get sick, and so when I do, it’s with a vengeance. I spent Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and yes­ter­day in a lump of mis­ery, slug­gish­ness and tis­sues. Today I am begin­ning to feel bet­ter, which is a good thing con­sid­er­ing… Thanks­giv­ing is in less than 48 hours.

In any case, we’re all mourn­ing the pass­ing of “Drake,” and there is much Face­book activ­i­ty in Avery’s life as a result. But nev­er mind: next week she has her very first pay­ing act­ing job! She’s pro­vid­ing a voiceover for “Bob the Builder,” a ter­rif­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion series here. At least, she is if she gets per­mis­sion from school. In one of those flur­ries of notes to school, that par­tic­u­lar request is in a pile along with “Yes, we’ll be at the par­ent-teacher con­fer­ences” tomor­row night. I always get excit­ed about these con­fer­ences, even when I know from long expe­ri­ence that what will hap­pen is this: each teacher will gaze at us calm­ly and say some­thing like, “Every­thing’s fine.”

Tonight was the Soiree Musi­cale at school, a love­ly evening of musi­cal feats (too much flute, not enough swing band). Avery and her “Junior Madri­gal Choir” per­formed a hair-rais­ing­ly touch­ing “Ave Maria,” and can I just say? I will be so pleased when, some­day, I can lis­ten to my child sing in a con­cert with­out my break­ing down into hid­den tears. I always have to pre­tend I have some­thing in my eye, or that I must blow my nose (at least tonight I had a cold). There is some­thing about the utter inno­cence, the knowl­edge of the effort put into the per­for­mance, the touch­ing invest­ment of all these girls into their achieve­ments that makes me unbear­ably sen­ti­men­tal. I find myself think­ing, “You’ll learn to sing these love­ly solos and play the sax­o­phone and write your own arrange­ments of ancient songs, and then what? You’ll wake up one day and YOU’RE the moth­er, sit­ting in the audi­ence, won­der­ing where it all went.” I am real­ly in a mood!

Such was my funk­i­ness last evening when, in the throes of an annoy­ing hack­ing cough, I felt very blue. I think I can iden­ti­fy part of my sad­ness: I’ve been work­ing for sev­er­al weeks on a chap­ter for my “book” on Thanks­giv­ing. And it turns out, Thanks­giv­ing in Eng­land makes me sad. It’s an Amer­i­can hol­i­day! No mat­ter how love­ly our guests, and they will be, they are Eng­lish and as such, vis­i­tors to our hol­i­day. The child­hood feel­ings of fam­i­ly, bick­er­ing and famil­iar and beloved as they are, will not be present. I’ll wake up on Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing with that odd feel­ing of being in charge that nev­er fails to amaze me, no mat­ter how many (20 at least!) years I have been in charge. It’s meant to be my Aunt Mary Wayne and Uncle Ken­ny who host us and take care of it all. My dad should be dri­ving and my moth­er bick­er­ing about direc­tions to Ken­tucky, and my sis­ter and broth­er and I squab­bling about hav­ing enough room in the back­seat. I haven’t spent so much time think­ing about Thanks­giv­ing in years and years, and I miss every­one quite des­per­ate­ly. But I imag­ine that I’ll come out on the oth­er side, still feel­ing nos­tal­gic for the old days, but with my mind firm­ly aware that it’s my house, my hol­i­day now.

I’m mak­ing lists. Yes­ter­day John and I picked up the huge turkey and placed him in his briney bath of sea salt, pep­per­corns, fresh rose­mary, sage, cel­ery and onions. So he will repose until Thanks­giv­ing after­noon, when for the first time, I’m going to roast him upside down. So much for the Nor­man Rock­well pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty: this year his legs will be stick­ing down the wrong direc­tion, but let me tell you, that breast will be TEN­DER, not dried out. Then there will be the mashed pota­toes, the cheesy pota­toes my friend Becky has told me how to make (how we will miss her and her fam­i­ly on the day), green beans. John’s argu­ing with me over the beans. Should they be canned, with mush­room soup and fried onions on top? Yuck, but tra­di­tion­al. I’m not get­ting much sup­port for my view that they should be steamed, with a but­tery, gar­licky, lemo­ny dress­ing. It’s tra­di­tion ver­sus a food some­one might actu­al­ly want to eat.

Then there’s stuff­ing made of the torn-out insides of Ital­ian bread, sauteed sausage, cel­ery, onions, gar­lic, mush­rooms, fresh sage and a glug of heavy cream… and spinach with Gruyere cheese and cel­ery salt, and pump­kin pie!

I’ll do a post-mortem after the hol­i­day itself and give you some per­fect recipes. In the mean­time, let me tell you what will make any school­girl sit up and take notice at break­fast, when “Drake” has fin­ished and the hol­i­days are just begin­ning to beck­on. It’s warm, it’s fra­grant, col­or­ful, sweet and wel­com­ing. Just right for those dark morn­ings with the rain pelt­ing down the windows.

Per­fect Fruit Crumble
(serves about 4–6 breakfasts?)

6 nec­tarines or small peaches
2 dozen straw­ber­ries, hulled and halved
1 cup whole­meal flour
1 cup Demer­era sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp each: ground cloves, ground nutmeg
125g/1/2 cup cold butter

Cut up all the fruit and lay it in a glass dish about 9 x 5 inch­es. Then place flour, sug­ar and spices in a Cuisi­nart, turn it on, and grad­u­al­ly add, in small cubes, the cold but­ter. Let the mix­ture whizz until it has the con­sis­ten­cy of a rough, crumbly dough.

Scat­ter the crumbly dough over the fruit and bake at 180C/350F for 40 min­utes or until the fruit bub­bles and the top is brown.

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Onward and upward then, past nos­tal­gia for musi­cals, past dos­es of Day Nurse and Night Nurse for colds, past gro­cery lists and table-set­ting strate­gies. It’s time to assume the man­tle of adult­hood and be thankful.