Grazie.

As someone who has been through 32 semi-traditional Thanksgiving dinners, it's probably strange to admit that I do not enjoy most of the food.  This is a terrible secret that I would never reveal at the dinner table, as I'm fully aware of the amount of sweat, heavy lifting, and constant stirring that created carefully-prepared and equally-carefully-presented dishes.  Our family's spread, in the few seconds between placement and consumption, looks like a goddamn Rockwell painting.

Even before my dive into near-vegetarianism, most dishes were met with an apathetic "meh".  I would pile corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and turkey onto a plate and salt the fuck out of it and eat just enough to justify consuming between five and 900 buns.  This was, obviously, a parental decision (i.e. "no more buns until you eat real food"), but this unwritten rule stuck with me throughout adulthood.

There are, of course, exceptions.  This year my mom prepared a pile of roasted root vegetables that was stunning (particularly the brussels sprouts).  The stuffing, my grandmother's recipe, carried the appropriate amount of nostalgia that eating it reminded me of being a precocious toddler and snatching handfuls of stuffing from the serving dish as they sat on my kitchen counter.  My aunt's caesar salad is consistently amazing.  And I don't mean to necessarily discount the core Thanksgiving dishes.  Everyone seems to enjoy them, thoroughly, and I would be shocked if 30+ people were just humoring each other.

For years, Thanksgiving was held at my house.  I'd wake up to the smell of buns (oh god, OH GOD THOSE BUNS), stagger into the family room and watch the parade, and occasionally assist with heavy lifting or table setting.  The day began around noon, when my great aunt would show up and sit in the living room and yell conversation to my mom (who, by that time, was hurriedly getting changed and putting on makeup).  I was usually the coat-taker, creating a respectable pile on my parents' bed, as well as the guy usually called upon to carry food in from other relatives' cars.  In my teenage years I was also the valet and would drive my grandfather to Penn Hills for an hour or two to spend some time with his family.

Thanksgiving is, to the Marino family, actually two full meals...a pasta course around 1 or 2 and then the turkey-plus-other-stuff in the late afternoon.  I discovered, today, that this was not a very long tradition.  My uncle decided, maybe 15-20 years ago, that he wanted to make some ravioli...and the rest is history.  It's baffling, to me, that this tradition started in my lifetime, as I can't honestly remember a Thanksgiving where I did not eat two enormous meals.

After dinner...uh...the second dinner...whoever did not have a hand in creating food was responsible for washing the dishes.  This was not a steadfast rule.  I usually fell into this category, although sometimes I was pulled aside for breaking down tables or getting the desert buffet set up.  I know a lot of this might sound like a catering job...because it was.  The day featured anywhere from 25 to 40 people, often with a few coming and going between the two meals.  My parents' house, graciously called a "ranch" home, but was actually a modular house that was built in one place and then set on a foundation in Irwin, was not technically equipped to handle an ever-growing family.  Fire codes be damned, we made it work.

We had dinner at my aunt's house this year, and it was truly bizarre to show up there and things were already in motion.  It was even stranger to just sit down and talk to people instead of running all over the house on the little chores that Mom would snap at me from the kitchen.  I had all this free time, and I slipped easily into filling it the same way everyone else did.  I watched some football.  I made drawings with my cousins' kids (all of whom fall between "adorable" and "goddamn adorable").  I sat and talked to people that I seem to only see once a year.  I drank whiskey and ginger ale.  I stood on the porch smoking a cigarette while my daughter stomped around in the snow.  I listened to my grandfather tell the same four stories over and over.

There will be a day when my parents' generation refuses to host a Thanksgiving dinner(s), and rightfully so.  It takes weeks to prepare, requires cramming dozens of people into a space meant to hold ten, and lasts all day long, with little to no downtime.

But when that day comes I will, gladly...insistently...pick up the slack.

I won't do it because I love the food (obviously).  Or because I don't mind the days and days of work, or the planning, or the firm knowledge that I would be on my feet and doing something for at least 12 hours that day.  I'll do it because I need today.  I want today.

It's more than tradition, I think.  It's like folklore, passing down the customs of this crazy, extroverted, Italian family to my children, and their children.  We'll eat pasta for lunch because that's what we've always done (or so I thought), and that will be a satisfactory explanation, and maybe enough for our kids to do the same.  Some aunt will gather up all the kids and take a walk around the block because that's what has always happened.  All of the men will huddle around the television for eight hours of football.  Salt and pepper will always be just out of arms' reach.  Someone will fall asleep in a chair despite desperately loud individuals sitting all around him.  Kids will get yelled at for being too boisterous and they'll retreat upstairs (or downstairs), and we'll eventually miss them and coax them back until they get too noisy again.  People will leave in bursts, arms will grow weary from hugging.  At least six people will tear up.  At least one will cry.

After three decades, a lot of the memories blur...but I always manage one.  This year might be tossing one of the kids into the air from the couch, and remembering when my own daughter was that small and that captivated by free-falling.  Over and over.  But first I had to pinky promise that I wasn't going to tickle her (this was apparently a concern of hers with any family member).  On the 10th toss I said that I was worried I was going to smack her head into the ceiling, and the game changed to "hold me up so my head touches the ceiling."  And I obliged, because that kid brainwashed me.

I don't really care if this blog bites me in the ass.  If my family's reading this (and I'm sure most of them are passed out from excessive tryptophan and general exhaustion), I hope you guys know I'm serious.  Thanksgiving is not something I'm going to let die.

And, hell, my house has a ton of parking.  That's a huge bonus.