I was leafing through a list of Chicago restaurants open on Thanksgiving, feeling the first seeds of doubt begin to take root.
At first a holiday weekend in one of my favorite cities two years ago seemed like a good idea: waking early to join the throngs for the parade, strolling through the Christkindlmarket, catching a holiday show. Later I wasn't so sure.
Creature of habit that I am, I'd never spent Thanksgiving away from home, never eaten a holiday meal in a restaurant, let alone with just my husband. For me, the holiday was linked with cooking and friends and family, and the only traveling you did was to join them around their dining room table. Eating out seemed lonely and sad, something only for those with nowhere else to go.
Growing up, we'd wake to the muffled sounds of the Hudson Thanksgiving Day parade on TV and the clatter of pans and mixing bowls in the kitchen as my mother made stuffing for the turkey. If you were smart, you'd linger in bed a while longer, straining to hear whether the pies -- mincemeat, pumpkin and pecan -- made it past the dough stage, when she'd be most likely to fling it in frustration. Years later, when he went to paint them, my father discovered odd bits of dried crust on the walls.
In the afternoon, the smell of roasting turkey and the faint whistles of the football game on TV hanging on the air, we'd set the table with the good dishes -- the ones with the silver rims -- and the place cards my sister made out of colored paper and walnuts. The oval platter with the raised turkey design would make its annual appearance.
In the living room, installed in the La-Z-Boy, my grandfather would be scandalized by my grandmother's single glass of beer. Inevitably he'd sneak off to the kitchen for a pilfered slice of pie.
Eventually, though, the family scattered. Some started spending Thanksgiving with families of their own, others began volunteering to deliver holiday meals.
So when I got the idea to turn the holiday into a weekend getaway a few years ago, we decided to give dining out a try. Finding a single restaurant open, we put our name on the list, then waited with dozens of other cheerful latecomers. The mood was festive, the atmosphere crowded and cozy, the meal -- turkey with all the trimmings -- delicious.
We closed the place with the genial wait staff, who chatted with us as they cleaned up, excited to be heading home to their own holiday meals.
We had so much fun that last year when we got a flier in the mail for Thanksgiving dinner at a nearby resort, we made reservations on the spot. That year we dined by a big window overlooking the woods, then drove home in a shower of soft, fat snowflakes.
It was dusk when we came upon dessert. Slowing the car by the side of the road and rolling down our windows to the cold night air, we watched as three coyotes romped in a snowy meadow, their breath puffing white under a pale moon.
It was a Thanksgiving so unexpected and magical we know it can never be repeated. But, we're going to try.
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