Never mind Grandma's china.
In my sister Kim's house in Memphis, paper plates and plastic forks will be used on Thanksgiving Day, so as to make cleanup easier.
Turkey will be served, but so will lentil- walnut-mushroom loaf. There will be herbed, roasted root vegetables in addition to traditional mashed potatoes, vegan zucchini cake in addition to pumpkin pie. Kim's husband will help with prep. Even the multitude of millennials will be assigned a dish to make.
"Thanksgiving values of family and being together still hold, but everything else is up for grabs," said my surprisingly calm, apparently very hip sister, as she prepared to hostess 26 people at Thanksgiving, including six out-of-towners who will bunk in.
The year is 2018, after all, and some people have celiac.
"We intend to fully accommodate everybody, including six vegetarian-vegans," Kim said. "One person eats eggs and dairy but doesn't do fish. One won't eat salad dressings so you can't put vinegar on anything. Grandpa has to have bread stuffing and gravy, and my sister-in-law will bring sweet-potato casserole with mini-marshmallows. It's all good. We want to make sure everyone has what they need."
In Kim's Tennessee home and throughout this beleaguered land, Thanksgiving still means food and family, with 96 percent of Americans gathering for some kind of feast, according to Nationwide Insurance, and 54 million Americans journeying 50 miles or more to get there, says AAA,
But while many homes still stand on explicit tradition, gone from other homes are the old dos and don'ts of the holiday, including the politically incorrect and eating-disordered, not to mention potentially life-threatening "You will eat what's put in front of you." Gone are the days when women felt guilty if they didn't slave in the kitchen from turkey-in-the-oven until last-dish-washed. Women _ and men _ are looking for shortcuts, and other ways to inject 2018 values into a holiday that is 397 years old.
"We just order Chinese," says my friend, Jana, looking to simplify for herself and her husband.
An informal social-media query found other modifications, large and small, as simple and cheap as commercial stuffing for the chef-on-the-move and mushroom spinach lasagna for the vegans, and as elaborate and expensive as driving to a local farm and paying upwards of $160 for a heritage, free-range turkey. Some families make the same dishes they grew up with, but with organic and locally grown ingredients. Others turn the table on turkey altogether and make salmon or duck, and in one South Carolina home, homemade manicotti, while an increasing number of Americans set a nice table and then hop in the car and drive to Whole Foods. Last year, one in four either ate out or bought part or all of their meal at Whole Foods, Cracker Barrel or one of dozens of other eateries offering pre-cooked vegetarian or turkey meals, culinary writer Micheline Maynard wrote for "Forbes."
None of this means the heart of Thanksgiving is lost.
"It's just food; and that's not the point," says my friend Diane here in Ohio. "The point is to be thankful we're here."
Tofurkey may come and go, but gratitude will never go out of style. Nor will the observance of key customs, like at my friend Jaime's house, where everybody has to color in old coloring books while watching Macy's Parade. My friend Elaine always gives her turkey a name (Sebastian, Sinclair, Abner, Clarence, George, Henrietta, Collette, Astrid, Simone, Theodora, to name a few), a tradition from childhood. In Sara's house, the tune, "Alice's Restaurant," which her father always insisted on playing while the turkey roasted, will show up sometime during the holiday. As for my friend Marion, Thanksgiving will never be Thanksgiving without pie.
"Our family gathers in a modestly sized home in Erie, Pennsylvania, with about 30 people and never fewer than 15 pies. You can do the math."
As for me and my family, what makes Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is my son and me driving 750 miles south, while my daughter and her boyfriend travel 25 hours by car from Montana and my elder son flies in from Washington, D.C.
A sister and her son will drive 355 miles up from the Gulf Coast while a second sister takes a train 395 miles north from New Orleans.
Roads, airways and rail all point to Memphis, as the eight of us join with Kim and her family and her husband's extended family and friends. where the important thing really is being together, especially in 2018 when domestic terrorism and raging fires and national divisiveness make us long even more for the people closest to us.
That and cranberry sauce. Not sliced from a can like my mother did, but homemade with Granny Smith apples and brown-rice syrup instead of two kinds of sugar relish. And Mama's cornbread stuffing. Not stuffing with chicken livers and gizzards and the broth of a chicken hen, but stuffing 2018 style, with organic cornmeal, almond milk, coconut oil and veggie broth.
And OK, I own it, my hideous turkey platter, a mammoth piece of porcelain emblazoned with a colorful 3D turkey that I bought at a flea market when we lived in Missouri 20 years ago.
Ugly as a Christmas sweater, I imagine it will one day be the equivalent of Grandma's china.
No matter, somebody will one day say, as reads a magnet on my refrigerator: "It's not what's on the table that matters; it's what's in the chairs."
