The Welcome Table: An Annual Online Thanksgiving Meal
[Melissa stands up, taps her fork against her glass, and clears her throat. The conversation around the table dies down. She looks at everyone at the table.]
We do this every year: Come together as a community and have a virtual meal before we scatter to our actual meals. Unless, that is, you do not celebrate Thanksgiving. But I hope that you’ll join the table for virtual food and company even if you don’t follow this tradition offline.
Of course, you may be going nowhere this year due to COVID-19. I know that we will be home, missing everyone. This is a really hard year.
We’ve virtually eaten together since 2009. That’s when this tradition began. There are some people hurting at this table. For some people, this pre-meal is what gets them through their real meal later in the week. People have written that they’ve printed out this yearly post and comments and left the paper in their purse because it helped to have a tangible reminder that there were people out there who got it. Who weren’t going to ask them when they were going to hurry up and have children. Who weren’t going to cringe when someone spoke the name of a child they lost.
We are all so different. All of us. Around this table. But we have this one facet of our lives — and yes, even though it may be a big, overpowering one for you right now, it is only one facet of who you are — where we overlap: infertility or adoption or loss. And I am so thankful, so grateful, that I found all of you. Everyone needs a You-shaped space where they can be themselves. And that’s what I have here.
So every year, I ask people to bring a virtual dish to our meal. Place it in the comment section, explaining what you brought and why. And say anything else you need to say before sitting back down to enjoy the company. Update about where you are; your emotional state.
We’re an international group, hailing from countries all around the world. So while Thanksgiving is an American tradition, I hope that everyone around the world feels as if they can participate. (Especially our Canadian neighbours who celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago.) I’d love for your dish to come from your culture or country. Don’t worry about the contents on the table clashing.
As always, I am bringing stuffing. It’s comfort food; mushy and soggy and warm.
So what did you bring and what do you want to say to the community?
And please, start eating as everyone is introducing their dish. We don’t want the food to get cold and there are so many of us at this table. Thank you so much for coming, and I’m going to carry the warmth of this meal with me for the rest of this week.
9 comments
I’ve brought the perogies from my dad’s special supplier. 😉 She’s about 90 years old now & has been making perogies for our family for 35+ years, albeit her daughter does most of the work these days. 😉 Dad drives about 2 hours one way, once or twice a year to pick up a mass order of several dozen. He calls it “making a perogy run.”
They’re worth the trip! Don’t skimp on the butter or sour cream — or fried onions &/or bacon bits, if those are your things. 😉 (Virtual meal = no calories, right?? lol)
This HAS been a very hard year, and it’s not getting any easier, at least not for the next while. I have my long-awaited hysteroscopy/d&c on Friday (still scheduled, despite rising COVID-19 rates hereabouts…!), and an obligatory COVID test as well as bloodwork tomorrow. And it’s exactly one month to Christmas Eve, and I still haven’t quite wrapped my mind around the fact that — for the first time in my entire 60 years — I will still be sitting here in our condo and not in the living room at my parents’ house with my family 1000 miles away, opening presents & stuffing our faces. 🙁 I Skyped with my parents last weekend for the first time in a long time. I have not seen them in a year, and I was sad to see how much older and frail-er they looked. 🙁
My friends in the computer are a big part of what’s kept me sane these past 8-9 months. Reading blogs, writing in my own, and having Zoom meetups with online friends has always been a huge blessing, but never more so than in 2020. I am ever so grateful for you, Mel, and for this community and all the friends I have made here. Thank you!! <3
I’m bringing apple pie and cranberry sauce! The real kind, not out of a can. I make really good apple pie and my daughter and I make the cranberry sauce together from my grandma’s recipe so it’s special and comforting.
OK, now I’m hungry.
I’m bringing chocolate chip cookies, warm-from-the-oven (possibly not as good as Mel’s). They aren’t too Thanksgiving-y, but 2020 is definitely a year for comfort foods, and it doesn’t get any more comforting than this (to me, anyway).
I’m bringing some bread–maybe a nice round sourdough loaf with some olive oil for dipping, or some butter, if it turns out, or maybe a star bread filled with pesto, which works as a vegetarian dinner or a side dish. My own blog has languished for years, my child is now a senior in HS, and I’m still grateful for the people I’ve discovered via blogs, and blog comment threads, for keeping me company in the computer. It makes the world better.
Hmmm….I guess I will bring the Pumpkin Pie (!) and some cranberry jelly–slurped right out of the can! Oh, and rolls–gotta have the rolls!
Personally, this year was supposed to be me “winning” at being 50. I had a big 50 birthday party in December, then all hell broke loose in the world.
My 50th year was supposed to me leaning into the skid–enjoying life and doing things that I have not done. But–that did not quite happen like I thought–all the traditional things we do as a family or I do personally —that all stopped in February this year.
However, despite it all, I have found some things to be Thankful for for this year: family and time spent together and the technology to be able to keep in touch with those we cannot be together with physically; our pets–our cats have been a wonderful anti-anxiety medicine. Thankful for health and being together. Thankful for all of you to share that with. ((Hugs to you all))
Hmmm, I’m trying to think of something new to bring … I know, I’ll bring my pumpkin gnocchi. I first had it at a favourite trattoria in Vittorio Veneto back in 2013, and try and make it at least once a year. They’re packed with parmesan, so not diet food, but very comforting!
This year has been so weird. We lost father-in-law, but he was ready to go, so there’s not so much grief, but satisfaction for him of a life well lived. And now we’ve been free to travel – domestically only, of course. I’m more grateful than ever this year that I am a New Zealander, and get to live in this nation and go about my life pretty much as usual these days. But this year has also brought my exchange student friends back into my life, and with other online friends zoom get-togethers have put faces to names, and accents to voices I already knew so well. I am grateful for that.
Happy Thanksgiving, Mel! I will bring my cranberry salad that I make every year from my late grandmother’s recipe. It’s a favorite in our family: my sister and I have even gotten our in-laws eating it. 🙂
I’ll bring the green bean casserole. It looks like we need a green vegetable and it’s one of those dishes that’s always there at Thanksgiving, no matter where or with whom I am celebrating. You know, it’s the green bean dish cooked with condensed mushroom soup and topped with the crunchy fried onion toppers. I bring this dish full of gratitude for the sanity and sense of connection the IF blogosphere has brought me over the years, especially this year. Thank you to all of you! <3
Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll bring Bryce’s potatoes Gratin, all gooey and bubbling and cheesy, with a golden gruyere crust and sprigs of thyme on top. It’s beautiful, delicious, and absolutely terrible for you.
I’m grateful for health, for hard-earned happiness, for community. For Mel and this community. For a sense of community even as we’re isolated in real life and living in a world without freely given hugs and 6-foot spacing, where we rely on eyes and foreheads to see emotion on faces.
I’m in a good place this year. I am 3.5 years into resolution without parenting, and it has been hard work but I feel happy, and fulfilled by the life I have, and that while the pain is still there, it’s padded and outweighed by a lot of gratitude and satisfaction and happiness with what is, not what should have been. I don’t feel like a sad sap. I feel like a survivor.
I hope you are all well, and if you’re not, that you have support to get through. Now to eat all this delicious food!