From Upset to Joy - Choosing Laughter

Have you ever had difficult family dynamics, faulty appliances or recipe disasters taint your sparkling vision of a Rockwellian Thanksgiving?

Expect the Unexpected
If you head into the Holidays expecting that things won’t be perfect, and don’t allow yourself to take the way people act personally, and decide not to beat yourself up if the oven dies, then you open yourself up to the joyful, and funny, moments that happen when family comes together around a big feast.

Our Turkey debacle
One year, just after our new kitchen with it’s Pro Viking Range emerged out of the chaos of construction, Jerry and I invited his older sons and their significant others to join us for Thanksgiving. I created a festive dining room table on top of a sheet of plywood, ordered an expensive organic turkey and planned a delicious menu.

Everything was ready for a perfect day - I had picked up the turkey the night before and stored it in our overflow fridge, the sauces and desserts were all made, I'd finished all of the chopping for dishes to be made on the day and even had persimmons to brighten up the salad. But when I woke up on Thanksgiving and pulled the turkey out of the fridge, it was warm. The fridge had died some time in the night and the turkey had sat for who-knows-how-long at room temperature.

We had to toss that expensive turkey into the garbage.

Not to be daunted, I jumped in the car and drove around town to every grocery store (there are 5 within 3 miles of our house) trying to find a turkey that wasn’t already claimed and wasn’t frozen solid.

Nothing.

At the 5th grocery store, the barren meat department suggested I buy an already cooked one from the deli. But just as I ran to the deli, the last turkey was being handed over to another customer. Dejected, I headed back to the meat department to look for game hens, or a chicken or any non-frozen bird that could fit into our menu. But even the game hens were frozen solid and wouldn’t be ready to eat until long after Thanksgiving dinner.

Just as I was about to give up, the butcher came running out with a huge 28 pound top-of-the-line turkey that someone had reserved for the day before but not picked up, and told me to take it.

Excited, I called home and told my hubby to turn on the oven!

We were going to eat a bit late, but no problem - we had a turkey!

However, an hour into cooking, I noticed that we were missing the roasting turkey smell, so decided to take a peek into the oven.

You guessed it. Our new oven had decided right then and there to die.

So, being of resilient stuff, we decided to roast the turkey in the small 2nd oven. Only problem - the roasting pan was too big.

Now it was Jerry’s turn to run around town looking for something that would fit. He ended up bringing home a disposable aluminum pan which we could bend and mold to the oven, but now was of course too small for the turkey.

So, here we were. A dead fridge. A whole turkey in the garbage. A dead oven. A too-large turkey that had been in a warm oven for a bit and was now in grave danger of having to be thrown out just like it’s predecessor.

I looked at Jerry and he at me and in that moment we realized that we had a choice. We could either get mad and cry, or cut up the darn turkey and laugh.

We decided on laughter and a completely butchered turkey.

So, instead of giving our family a Rockwellian Thanksgiving, we gave them laughter, a good story and hopefully the mindset that there is always a solution to every problem.

It was also a great reminder that sometimes all we need to do to change upset to joy, is to choose laughter.

I hope your Thanksgiving is full of laughter - even if, or especially if, things don’t go the way you planned!

Beverly

Now it’s your turn - please share your funny, or crazy Holiday story below!