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Never been part of turkey team

Thursday is the big Turkey Day. The busiest-cooking-before-the-busiest-shopping-day-of-the-year.

That’s enough to petrify a poultry panicked person. Say that three times.

And I’m here feeling guilty, oh, and thankful, but mostly guilty.

I’ve never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner myself. I’ve never been part of the head turkey procurement, management and preparation team.

As a child and even young adult, on many a Thanksgiving eves, I couldn’t help but be shaken out of my slumber by footsteps in the kitchen and rattling of pans.

I heard the oven door creaking open and then it was finished … while not quite … for the time being. There was more prep to be done the next morning.

link Helena Rodriguez

When I was a little girl, I watched Dad roll out pie dough on the table. A layer of flour was dusted all over the table as Dad rolled the thick dough across it. And then he’d pound, and roll. He put the filling in and sometimes cut out lattice for a fanciful look.

After I grew up, maybe it got too much for Dad, baking all week at the college and then being head baker for our Thanksgiving dinner. And so now, over the past few years, Dad makes the pies at work. I call it killing two birds or rather, pies, for the big Bird Day, with one oven.

As the sun then rises on Thanksgiving morning, I hear Mom beginning the long process of making homemade dressing — first baking the cornbread and then doing the magic she does with the turkey broth, bread crumbs, celery and other ingredients. She boils eggs and adds some of the dripping from the turkey for her giblet gravy.

I lay in bed awhile feeling guilty, wondering what I will do if I’m ever responsible for a Thanksgiving meal. I was a single mom and so we did everything at Mom and Dad’s house; still being single in my magnificent middle ages, well, I don’t do anymore cooking than I have to.

I came to a startling conclusion this past weekend that I hate to cook. Actually, the sentiment has been building over the past few years. Perhaps because I became a little spoiled when I lived alone for awhile.

Sometimes I think I have the best of both worlds. I like being alone sometimes, although not as much as I used to and not for as long as I use to. I also come from a large family, big enough to not be alone if I don’t want to.

If I’m thankful for anything this Thanksgiving it is for family because there are those who don’t have a family to take for granted like I do.

I don’t mean that to sound cold. Sometimes being single around the holidays can leave you with a lingering longing. You’re not sure where you fit in, and so, even in a crowded room, you can feel like something is missing.

I spent many holidays in my 30s and 40s trying to do the right thing, mostly out of a sense of duty, confused between feelings of wanting to recapture and cling to the magicalism of my childhood holidays and by feelings of just wanting to bust out and create my own new traditions and memories.

I liken this feeling to the “long loneliness” that social activist Dorothy Day wrote about in her 1952 book by that title.

I allowed this long loneliness to overwhelm me for many holidays. It was like a depression, but I’m not the kind of person who can stay depressed for long.

With friends in high places praying for me, I have realized that being single requires maintenance, high maintenance, and simultaneously realized you have unmet needs that no one person can satisfy.

And so I just go with the flow, a different kind of flow, though. Scriptures refer to it as the streams of living waters.

Helena Rodriguez is a Portales native. Contact her at: [email protected]