Fathers and Eves

Every year on this day, I always think of how - also every year on this day - I would say to my father, "Why is today not Thanksgiving Eve?"  And he would always respond with some version of, "Well, technically it is, but people just don't call it that."  I seldom asked this of my mother, since her response was *always* "Oh for God's sake!" and she seemed annoyed, so I just figured it was better to get an actual answer from my father.

And that was always the first of about a million questions I would have for my dad while I "helped" him fix Thanksgiving dinner.  He was always the cook on holidays, which we loved because although he would use every pan and bowl, etc. in the kitchen, he was a really good cook.  He would begin the night before, cleaning the turkey and starting the stuffing.  My sisters were enough older that they had their own things they liked to do, but nope, I was always available to spend time with my dad.  I'm 99.9999999% sure that I spent most of the time talking, asking "important" questions, and generally making him wish he was out of town, but to his credit, he always let me stick around and in the end, I learned a LOT.  (So much so, that when I still lived at home and my sisters were married and living in other places, they would call me to find out how to cook a turkey- ha!)

But I have to tell you that as a kid, I really gave way to much thought to "eves."  I guess because Christmas got an Eve, and so did New Year's, and those were big deals.  I tried to make Thanksgiving Eve and Birthday Eve happen but to no avail.  Easter doesn't need an Eve, because it has Holy Saturday.  As I got older, I realized that no one a) cared as much as I did about it, and b) that they also didn't want to hear me go on about it.  Go figure.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving Eve.  Make it a good one.  :-)