I used to think that the worst thing my mother-in-law had ever done was smuggle a turkey leg into her purse on Thanksgiving. It turns out that wasn’t anything. She entered my home this year wearing six-inch heels, consumed all of my Thanksgiving food, and somehow managed to make it appear as though I was entirely at fault. But what about karma? Karma had its own ideas.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. My holiday. For two weeks, my whole personality was like this. I take out my grandmother’s old recipe cards, which are stained with butter and have weak handwriting. I cook like everyone is watching. Real butter and cream, herbs chopped by hand, and pies that have been in the fridge overnight so the filling sets just right. I don’t cut shortcuts; thus, it takes days of labor.
Elaine, my mother-in-law, is the reverse. She doesn’t care about cooking. She doesn’t care about effort. She doesn’t care about boundaries at all. She has a tendency of “stopping by” on Thanksgiving and taking anything I made. A pan full of stuffing. A piece of pie. A slice of turkey. She always leaves with a light compliment before she goes back outside.
My husband, Eric, would become mad for a minute every year and then say, “It’s just food.” But for me, it was more than that. It was tradition and love—the one time of year I felt close to my grandmother in the kitchen. I promised myself that this year would be calm. And for a time, it was. The smell of roasted turkey filled the house. The table looked like a magazine cover. The kids were happy. Everything felt just right.
Then the door to the front opened.
Elaine strode in like she owned the room. She had on perfume, high heels, and an attitude that was easy to see from a mile away. She went right to the dining table and picked up my flawlessly roasted turkey, the one I had brined for 24 hours, and took it to the kitchen as if it were hers.
Eric looked at her. “Mom? What are you up to?
She hardly looked up. She took out the new containers I had bought for leftovers and remarked, “My new man is expecting a home-cooked meal.” “Salon was late. I didn’t have the time.” “Don’t be cheap.”
Cheap. She called me cheap while she was putting my stuffing, potatoes, and gravy into her containers like she was at a buffet. We tried to talk to her, but she waved us away. When she was done, she had packed every dish, even the cornbread and cranberry sauce, into her car. She grinned like she hadn’t just taken everything off my table and left.
The room was quiet. The kids looked lost. The lovely table I had spent days getting ready for suddenly seemed like a farce.
My son muttered, “Are we not having Thanksgiving?”
“We are,” I responded quietly. “It’s going to be different.”
At my meticulously set Thanksgiving table, we ate frozen pizza. Candles were lit, and cloth napkins were placed out. and a box made of cardboard in the middle. The youngsters tried to make things better. Eric said he was sorry again and over. I was able to keep it together until Elaine called.
She didn’t say she was sorry. She didn’t even feel bad. She was very angry.
She cried that her partner was furious, that he didn’t want the food, that she had tripped, that the containers had spilled, and that it was all my fault for “cooking too well.” I couldn’t say anything. I just gazed at the phone.
Eric finally lost it. “I’m done,” he said.
He urged everyone to get their shoes on, and then he drove us to a tiny restaurant in the city that was still serving Thanksgiving meal. The lights were warm, the rolls were soft, and for the first time all day, I felt better.
My daughter whispered, “This is the best Thanksgiving.”
My son nodded. “We should come here every year.”
Eric held my hand tightly over supper. “I didn’t get it before,” he said. “I thought it was just food.” But it’s not. It’s your thing. Your love. And she didn’t care about it. “I’m sorry.”
That calm supper fixed something in me that I didn’t know was broken.
We went home after that, made cocoa and Christmas lights, and watched a movie. It wasn’t the Thanksgiving I had in mind, but it was ours—calm and sincere.
Two weeks later, Elaine contacted me: “You need to say you’re sorry.”
I almost spilled my coffee because I was laughing so hard. I gave Eric the message. He simply banned her number and gave me back my phone.
On Christmas Eve, the snow was soft, the chocolate was warm, and the kids were fighting over which Grinch movie was the greatest. There was no anxiety buzzing in the background for the first time in years.
Eric murmured softly, “She always takes.” “But this time, life gave it back to her.”
He was correct.
This Thanksgiving taught me something I didn’t expect: folks who take and take ultimately trip over the mess they make, and occasionally karma is nice enough to clean it up for you.
