Thanksgiving

I'm her caregiver and most of the time we get along fine.

The past is the past.

But on Thanksgiving I hate her. I hate all of them.

There are plenty of restaurants that serve Thanksgiving dinner. You can take it to go or eat there. That's what I do.

If you don't want to spend the money, just go to the frozen food section, get TV dinners, heat them up and serve it on your best china. Doesn't seem like your family deserves anything more.

An accident, Dolores, can be an unhappy woman's best friend

R2, I don't want a fancy dinner by myself. I want to not think about the day at all.

And as I said, most of the time my mother and I get on fine. She's admitted she handled several things poorly. And she's done a full 180 on her politics, etc. You want to see a feisty 82-year old actually make Trump voodoo dolls, you've got your lady.

It's cool.

Just not Thanksgiving.

I wish it was different. I used to like it when I was a kid and we'd all cook together. Then everyone else decided that I was the cook.

I once plated the meal, served it, left the house, went for an hour walk, came back, cleared the table (picked clean), did the dishes and went to bed without any of them asking why I hadn't been at the table.

It's another wintahhhh...in a summer townnnnn!

Good Lord, order in. Tell you Mom you are done with cooking the feast. Poor yourself a nice strong buzz and watch a movie you want when Mom is asleep. There is simply no need to put yourself through something this upsetting.

You sound awful. Relax, take a deep breath.

You say you hate the idea of Thanksgiving; yet seem to revel in your own misery.

Yeah, I'd say to take baby steps. This year, you still invite Mom, but don't cook. Order in, like R6 says. Next year, maybe don't invite Mom at all. Actions have consequences. You reap what you sow.

Just smoke copious amounts of dope, silly!

It's so awful you're being actually [italic]forced[/italic] into doing this as an adult! I'm so sorry they are making you do it literally at gunpoint, OP.

Wait... they're not actually aiming guns at you when you're at the stove? You're doing this entirely out of misplaced guilt?

Then I have zero sympathy for you, Uncle Bottom. And neither should anyone else.

"Man up! Or at least lady down a bit." -- Sue, VEEP

I think people misunderstand. My mother requires live-in care, which at this point is me. My other siblings are either out of state or have their own disasters to deal with.

No one comes over for the meal anymore. It's her and me.

364 days out of the year this is not an issue. Thanksgiving, it is.

I mean I suppose I could just let her fend for herself that day, but I'd like the house to not be burned to the ground when I get back.

Anyway I think the trick will be to reinvent the day as something other than a late meal. Eat earlier, then go out for a drive and a movie. That might break up my depression and be something she'd enjoy too.

Don't participate if you hate it.

My Safeway has a pre-packaged dinner for sale.

Perhaps it's such a miserable affair because it's no one but you and your feeble mother. Why not invite some people you actually enjoy being around and would enjoy cooking for? Is there anyone in your life like that, OP? Or maybe you could take your mother as a guest to a friend's dinner?

Susan, is there something on your mind?

I am not a turkey dinner fan. We did a family pow wow and learned only one of the group actually looked forward to that stupid turkey. We now have prime rib or something comparable. Problem solved... no one falls asleep 10 minutes after dinner and the cooking part is waaay easier. An easy veg, an easy starch if any at all, Caesar salad and great wine.

R16, I agree with you.

I actually like turkey and I love stuffing. Maybe a chicken this year with a turkey wing or leg for sandwiches (which I also love).

Don’t jump the gun, OP.

Shouldn’t you be focused on how much you hate Halloween?

I'm sorry you don't have the balls to have a direct conversation with your mother, OP. Don't hang your shit on us.

You should just skip it. At 82, she won’t even notice and will just think it’s any random Thursday. If she asks about Thanksgiving, tell her that was last month.

[quote]It's more than two months away and I am already dreading it.

[quote]I make a turkey with stuffing and the trimmings. My mother eats it and goes to bed.

I hate Thanksgiving, too, because it's bad food and a family that pretends to have something, anything in common isn't how I like to blow away a day. But your problem, OP, would seem neither to be Thanksgiving nor your mother.

You´re her caregiver, live-in caregiver. You're in charge. Tell her this year things are different, you're ordering a Chinese meal delivered, no guests. If the other family members want to arrange something they are welcome to do so, it's their turn and their choice, but you are taking an indefinite break from the holiday.

You´re a adult, FFS, don't be crippled by what you think are people's expectations of you, and don't stew over grievances past.

[quote]I feel so upset even thinking about it. How meaningless and joyless it is. It stands in for all the abuse she and my siblings ladled out. And how I never got away.

And if you feel like that, dump the old bag at a sibling´s place and change you telephone number and address.

OP, I think therapy would be helpful.

Gurl do you live in a medium to big size city? The bathhouses and bookstores are hopping on Friday. You should plan accordingly.

Gay man in an excruciatingly codependent relationship with live-in mother. Groundbreaking.

No leftovers...

OP, I think this is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play called ‘night Mother.

Can you order a turkey dinner from your supermarket?

Do you have a Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans restaurant? They sell complete meals you pick up the day before (or day of) and just heat up. I had elderly neighbors who alternated ordering from those two restaurants for holidays and like the meals more than the supermarket prepared dinners. A turkey dinner from a supermarket or restaurant will yield plenty of leftovers and you won't have to cook for several days.

How about you do a free trial from a streaming service you don't have and watching movies or shows you don't normally have access to? Don't forget to cancel the free trial before you get charged!

[quote]Don't forget to cancel the free trial before you get charged!

Or just put it on Mom's credit card.

My mom and I were alone on Thanksgiving for the last 10 years of her life.

We went out, and she enjoyed the biggest steak she could gobble.

Lord that woman could eat.

I enjoyed watching her. I miss her. I'm glad she was happy.

I like Thanksgiving - the least commercial holiday and is celebrated by everyone.

But dammit - it's too fucking close to Christmas. It's too much stress too close together - and if you don't like some of your relatives - you have to fucking brace yourself for the Tgiving/Xmas combo only 4 weeks apart.

The point is that OP dislikes his mother and is "trapped" (self-imposed) in this celebratory, giving (him giving, her taking) sham Thanksgiving with his mother.

OP could use therapy. Mother will die and OP will still have all of these hang-ups. Better to break the shackles while Mom is alive.

I say, get out of Dodge. Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, Europe. Take yourself one of Rose places, get properly laid a few times, and celebrate you breaking the cycle.

don’t celebrate this shit in Europe.

Best advice is R32.

Treat yourself to something special, OP. Start your own tradition.

For OP - I highly recommend buying a Thanksgiving Dinner meal from Whole Foods.

Just heat it up - nobody needs to know. Then put the dishes in the dishwasher and DONE.

We did this a few years when my relatives were older - so much easier on everyone. Who wants to spend the whole day before and day of in the kitchen for a meal that will be finished in 20 minutes?

Fuck that noise.

You have two months to make a reservation at a nice restaurant that does Thanksgiving. Let someone else cook. Let someone else do the dishes and contemplate suicide. Make a one-day adventure out of it. She can fall asleep in the car on the way home.

Don't do this to yourself. Or her.

R35 agreed - OP - I don't think your mom looks that forward to Thanksgiving anymore either. Have you even talked to her about other options?

My Thanksgiving dinners were pretty much over when my aunt died, strangely enough, on Thanksgiving. Lung cancer.

She cooked, my mother and grandmother helped and helped with the cleanup as well. The food was always to die for, and my aunt made the best pies (without any recipes!) I have ever eaten in my life. I was always given food to take home. The men (and me, of course!) sat in front of football, my grandfather snoozing. Overall, a wonderful day.

My aunt died in 2012, younger than I am now. Her parents (and her younger brother) died before her. One of my younger sisters died a year ago next month. I don't keep in touch with my cousin or my aunt's re-married husband, neither of whom I liked very much anyway. My mother (my aunt's older sister) is still alive at 84, but she's in assisted living. Now, [bold]there's[/bold] a woman who wouldn't know it was Thanksgiving unless you told her.

Try to enjoy these years, OP -- they'll never come again.

Pizza delivery is your friend.

OP, this is the year you set boundaries. What are your siblings doing to provide respite care for you? One of them needs to take your mom or come stay with you a few days so you get a break.

If this can’t be arranged over Thanksgiving this year, tell your mom now that you can’t face another “traditional “ Thanksgiving and offer to do something different, like as you said, go out to dinner and a movie.

Just yesterday I threw my sisters and sisters in law into a complete tizzy. I let them know way in advance that I am not traveling on Thanksgiving (I am having surgery a couple of weeks before) and I invited everyone to my house for brunch on Christmas Day. My mom agreed to come Christmas Eve and sleep over with the only stipulation that I bring her to church. This will be the first Christmas since my dad died and my longtime partner and I broke up so my mom and I will both be alone. My mom lives 90 minutes away and all my siblings live within a half hour of her. No one is going to want to drive that far for brunch on Christmas yet I am expected to travel for every holiday. We’ll see how this plays out.

The op lives with his mom, helps her out around the house as repayment, calls that being a care tracker, and bitches because the old broad likes thanksgiving,

And it’s not that he just does not like thanksgiving the poor dear is so triggered by mom and thanksgiving he is starting his tale of woe two months early.

Poor fucking mom

Don’t worry op she will be gone soon

Have you considered matricide?

Poor OP...a regular Charlotte Vale.

I’m not going to carve the turkey this year, mother. You can’t make me.

You don't have to make everything, OP. Get most of the meal from a local restaurant that has a special Thanksgiving meal. Usually you have to order these things weeks or months ahead, so start checking now. Then make ONE thing yourself. Whatever dish it is that you and mom like your homemade version of most.

Way less stressful.

R38, Pizza Hut, large, extra sauce.

I talked with her about it today and told her I think the holiday is pretty much meaningless. She agreed.

I suggested we have a scaled back version of the meal earlier in the day and then take a drive (we live in a nice area for drives) and finish with a movie and dessert at a diner.

She said something interesting - that she felt like a third wheel because she can't cook (she could make ice cubes and burn them) and there's no creative aspect to it, unlike other holidays where making ornaments and decorations is something we both enjoy.

My siblings are all at each others' throats so no get-togethers. And frankly, I'm sick of the wall-to-wall cynicism they bring with them wherever they go. I do too much of that myself.

This thread has been quite helpful.

R40, she moved into my house. Which is fine - she has her own suite so there's studio space and a bedroom.

Listen, you pack a hamper with two big turkey clubs and a whole Patti Labelle pie to split, and drive somewhere scenic. Scenic, and with a roaming cellular connection, so you two can watch Walmart Black Friday fights from 10 years ago on a phone or tablet.

Well done, OP.

Good for you, OP. After my Mom and Grandmother died (they did most of the cooking), we stopped driving 2 hours into Queens, NY for Thanksgiving. It worked out well since dinner was always late (sometimes after 4 pm) and we still had a 2 hr. drive back home while everyone else was a train stop or 2 from my Aunt's house.

I kept up making everything (turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, and sweet potato pies) for my 3 siblings until I realized I was only doing it because *I* loved the traditional meal. Once that dawned on me, everyone was on their own. Now, I buy myself a split chicken breast, instant mash, and green beans. I skip dessert in favor of my favorite wine. When I would go to my sister's apartment, we would make skillet lasagna (America's Test Kitchen recipe) or stuffed shells. Now we buy both from the local Uncle Giuseppe's.

Good for you both OP, r46.

A change-up will be a good thing.

I know you probably already know all this but please forgive me if I post it anyway. At 82, your mom might not want too much of a long day.

Bathroom issues for elders are real.

Also, if you go to the cinema, those stairs in the movie theatre can be very dark and confusing for elders if they have to use the restroom during the movie.

Glad you found an alternative, OP. Frankly, it still sounds like a lot of activities for one day. I say that because I hate movie theaters.

Nice that your mom opened up and admitted to feeling like a 3rd wheel.

Yes, good on you, OP/R46 for being communicative and taking charge of your own happiness. And it turns out your mother was on the same page as you.

I too spent years as the self-appointed martyr in my family, which only served to make me resentful and often miserable, with very little payoff in terms of everyone else's happiness. Therapy was enormously helpful in giving me the encouragement to break those patterns, but the real work was in building up muscle in boundary setting and needs sharing, even when it felt deeply uncomfortable. The payoff is invaluable and bleeds over into every other area of your life.

My mother m died this past summer

I'n so sorry, R54!

My deepest sympathy, r54.

I'm sentimental and weird enough to love the holidays precisely because they make me sad and wistful.

My theory on why humans invented Holidays: They're futile, ever-losing attempts to push back on the relentlessness of passing Time.

That's why they're so poignant and melancholy, especially if beloved family or friends have died within the past couple of years, and/or you're lonely.

I'm glad for your talk with your mother, OP. It sounds like you may well be able to salvage things and make a simple day on your own terms with her input that attempts to make a tradition of thinking through a thing rather than just going through the motions begridingly.

I never liked Thanksgiving either. Americans, because they have so few social traditions centered around family, make a huge fucking deal out of Thanksgiving especially. Or that's my theory. At least Xmas gift giving and holiday traditions usually evolve within a family over time, but Thanksgiving is a veritable magnet for traditions that must be kept forever and which can change only by addition, never subrtraction. My parents´Thanksgivings had the same dishes for half a century or so. My mother made some labor intensive dinner rolls for all those years because one of my brothers loved them so. IN fact he liked them when he was a kid, but fell out with them later in life but felt he could never mention it for fear of offending our mother. No one else was crazy about them either, and for the last 20-some years of her life she was prone to burn them and/or get the proportions wrong such that they didn't rise properly. Every other dish that I remember from the time I started school was on the table every Thanksgiving. It didn't matter than no one ate more than a few of them. From boredom with the same unwaivering menu, a new dish would be added every so many years, and, again, no matter if no one liked it, it could not be dropped from the menu (and so she served a vile mint green concoction called Watergate Salad for 20 or so years after the break-in that spawned the eponymous muck.) My mother did not soften with age and only got cankier, bitterly complaining for months in advance about Thanksgiving and her menu, and the for weeks afterward a sort of cloud of ingratutude hovered over her and she threatened never again (alas a hollow promise.) At least the menu was richer than the conversation. Small wonder that the 'ordeal' of a meal was over in less than a half hour. You can only break the silence with, 'This is nice' so many times without sounding like a looney. Thankfulness was breaking the tradition of going from college days, I only attended one or two such dinners as an adult. Instead I would try to see my parents betewen Thanksgiving and Xmas, not on a holiday but on an ordinary day with no special feast, just short notice and a favorite restaurant of my parents, or a country drive, or something simple without expectation that was always more pleasant.

Invite some Datalounger’s to dinner-could help!

Volunteer at a soup kitchen and serve turkey dinners to those in need. Or serve dinners to shut-ins in your area (contact local churches and places of worship). I always admired the scene in the Joan Rivers' documentary ("A Piece of Work") where she and her grandson volunteered every Thanksgiving morning to bring a turkey dinner to those who couldn't leave their dwellings {"God's Love - We Deliver"). She did it to show her grandson Cooper how the less fortunate lived, and needed love and respect like anyone else.

R59. Lisa Rinna works the soup kitchens too!

I like the idea of a movie and a drive, then go to Chinese for dinner. No cooking and probably a day you'll both enjoy more, OP.

I realized I was being maudlin. I don't know why it hit me so hard.

My health is not in good shape and my career is in the crapper. My siblings are fighting like cats and dogs.

But hey - if I had a "bad childhood", so did pretty much every other gay person my age that I know. And I ain't dead yet.

My mom was not ideal but she wasn't the worst possibility.

I think we'll just reinvent this holiday to suit our situation and ourselves.

But thanks for letting me vent. I had to put it down somewhere to see what was bothering me.

Be kind to yourself, OP, and your Mom.

As human beings, we're all doing the best we can with the limits of what we know, and don't know, about ourselves and our lives.

You're a very good son in a tough situation and you need a break. Ask yourself what it is about Thanksgiving dinner you hate. Is it all the work or the lack of appreciation or do you just not care for the food? Some years I'm up for going all out on Turkey day dinner. Other years, I can't be bothered. Whole Foods is a great alternative. Make it easy on yourself.

R57, some Americans do know how to use paragraph breaks, though.

It's going to be strange this year without Greg stinking up the place with his tips.

There are many great ideas here and a couple of turkeys. These family holiday get2gethers can be great or a pain. Like Fleetwood Mac said, You Can Go Your Own Way and it's feeling like a lot of us do.

I think, for some, the nostalgia overtakes the actual holiday and prep. We didn't have turkey, stuffing (yes, for over 50 years, and we survived each meal), and sweet potato pies. But, as family members die, the food, while looking the same, doesn't taste the same so it doesn't evoke the same warm memories.

My grandmother was born and partially raised on a farm; she only knew fresh killed proteins. My mom made sure she had a fresh killed turkey every year. I don't think I had a frozen turkey until I was in my 50s. I made the stuffing from scratch (making corn meal cakes, and adding celery, etc) the day before. My would get up at 5 am to put the turkey in the oven.

When my grandmother died, we had TKS at my Aunt's house. She would make a standing rib roast and stuffing which was different from my Grandmother's recipe. It got to the place where we would actually decided where we would get food once we got home since the food was cold or downright inedible. She was a lawyer so she never paid attention to cooking or recipes.