Thanksgiving in England

Thanksgiving has been billed as the end of an era in my family this year. My parents are hosting the family dinner in their Oregon home for the last time before they sell their comfortable, spacious house and downsize to a one-level place. At least, that’s what they keep telling us. Speaking from recent experience, I can confidently say that buying and selling a house takes longer than you think it will, and knowing my parents, I wouldn’t say with certainty that they’ll be out of theirs before next November. Still, that’s the plan, so my three brothers and their spouses, my six nieces and nephews, plus my two cousins and their two kids will all make the journey through the evergreen forests to converge on the warm and cozy Huntington Drive house this week with silly amounts of delicious food to share.

I won’t be there. The home I lived in from ages thirteen to eighteen will be filled with everyone in my family except me. But I’ve been to enough Lindsley family Thanksgivings that I can envision how the event will go. The dining table and card tables will be set up with elegant autumnal table cloths and centerpieces. The natural wood buffet table in the kitchen will be laden with an indecent number of pies of every variety imaginable, including a “mystery pie” designed to test the taste buds. Scents of sweet potato casserole browning in the oven, fluffy potatoes being mashed, and a huge smoked turkey sizzling away will permeate every corner of the house and make tummies rumble.

The absurdly long remodeled kitchen will be bustling with my mom in an apron and some variety of her daughters-in-law, with the occasional appearance by my brothers. My dad will be as far away from the action as he can manage, likely outside in the shop. The younger kids will be chasing each other around the downstairs, or playing music on the drums and xylophones, or playing games, while the tweens are ensconced in the squishy tan sectional that borders the family room, staring at their phones and ignoring the world around them. My siblings and cousins will be catching up with each other’s news. Despite all living on the west coast, they don’t see each other that often, and they will be sharing how jobs are going, how the kids are doing in school, and what new sewing or DIY house projects they’re tackling. It will be pleasant and comfortable, with only a light dusting of chaos, now that most of the grandkids are older and that my two rambunctious children, one and five years old, won’t be there.

My son, a toddler with a sense of humor and his own agenda, has never been to that house. Born a few months into the pandemic, and shortly after we moved from Hawaii to England, he was eleven months old before he even met my parents in person. He has never been on an airplane, has never been outside of the UK. My brothers and their families are just moving pictures on a screen to him.

In contrast, my five-year-old daughter has been on about thirty airplanes in her short life, traversing oceans and continents, and last visited my parents’ house two years ago. But Covid and time have obliterated those memories for her. Even her previous home of Hawaii is more of a feeling than a memory now--just warmth, fragrant breezes, and contentment. Oregon is a foreign concept to her, just like the holiday of Thanksgiving itself. She doesn’t remember her last Thanksgiving in Oregon as a three-year-old, drawing pictures on the kitchen chalkboard with Grandpa, who made it down onto the floor with her. Or reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie with Grammie in the floral armchair. Trying to emulate her big cousins who were very sweet and patient with her. As etched into my memory as those events were, the relevant synapses in her brain have already been pruned and discarded. So this week I’ve been trying to explain to my daughter what Thanksgiving is about. A budding English girl, she remains unconvinced of its importance. 

“But it’s not a real holiday since I won’t get to stay home from school,” she told me yesterday. Admittedly, she has a point. Thanksgiving doesn’t feel quite the same living in England, when no one else is snug at home on a Thursday, cooking up a storm, and gathering with family to celebrate. There’s a sort of inertia that washes over you when celebrating something by yourself in another country. When the only turkeys you can find in the stores are frozen ones set out early for Christmas, and when you have to order canned pumpkin from Amazon because it doesn’t exist elsewhere. When British people look incredulous and slightly disgusted if you mention pumpkin pie. It’s tough to be an American abroad on Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday that revels in the concept of home, with comforting rituals of food and family to encourage you to reflect on the beauty and bounties of your home and family life. Yet because you have made your life in a foreign country, your whole understanding of what constitutes home has acquired so many shades of complexity that nothing and nowhere quite feels like home anymore. Try as you might to approximate those rituals, you simply can’t evoke the sentiments in the same way. Instead of togetherness, you feel more alone. 

But I wouldn’t want to abandon my family’s traditions and give up on Thanksgiving. Given that my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas together, Thanksgiving is the one holiday of the year where we acknowledge the beauty, vitality, and quirkiness of the now much-expanded Lindsley family. Where we overcome our introversion and ineptitude at polite conversation for the sake of building unity amongst our selves and our spouses and our children. It’s also where we remember our loved ones who have passed on, by sharing stories about them and keeping their traditions alive. Before my family eats their Thanksgiving meal, for instance, they will undoubtedly circle around the kitchen holding hands (or touching elbows this year, perhaps) and chant “yummmmm” in the style of my aunt Maya, whose peaceful and loving presence will be missed again this year. Thanksgiving allows us to see how beautiful the foliage is on our family tree, and the falling leaves outside remind us of those who have already floated away from our branches. 

As I thought about Thanksgiving this year, my second year in a row of not physically being with my family, I reflected on the purpose of the holiday and its place in my life. Thanksgiving isn’t just about catching up with relatives and stuffing our faces with food. And as I’m realizing more with each year I spend outside of the US, it also isn’t about relishing the coziness of my parents’ house and feeling comforted and loved by the people I grew up around. I live 4,750 miles away from my parents and siblings. If I focus on the distance between us and what I’m missing out on because of it, I’d much rather skip Thanksgiving altogether. It hurts too much. Besides, if my parents do manage to sell their house before next November, I won’t have a familiar home to go back to anyway. So I have to let go of those ephemeral desires and focus on what Thanksgiving is really about.

Thanksgiving is about gratitude. That’s what I told my daughter anyway. She quickly latched onto the concept and started listing things she was thankful for. “I’m very thanksgiving for having such a wonderful loving mum,” she said, before hugging me with a warm smile. I managed to keep a straight face at her misuse of the word “thanksgiving”, and then cringed inside just a little that she called me her mum instead of her mom. But I let the moment pass and listened to the rest of her gratitude list. It was sweet and thoughtful, a beautiful reflection of her five-year-old mind.

And reflection is needed if we are to look deep enough within ourselves to feel a genuine sense of gratitude for all of the twists and turns that life throws at us. What a marvelous and unexpected journey I’ve had that has led me to this place. From Washington, to Missouri, to Oregon, to Ohio, to Paris, to Hawaii, to England, I’ve taken with me the love of my family, my husband, and now my children wherever I go. Thanksgiving gives us the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of home and family, and when I think about the manifold blessings I’ve received, gratitude wells up within me, threatening to leak out as tears. This time of reflection, this appreciation for life’s bounties, this thankfulness for the people in our lives is what I want to pass along to my children by sharing my holiday with them.

A first Thanksgiving for my Scottish in-laws

I hope that one year we’ll make it back to Oregon in November, perhaps when my son can sit still for more than thirty seconds and can handle fifteen hours on an airplane. But in the meantime, we can still contribute to our family
unity by celebrating Thanksgiving in England. In the words of my dad, “We live in two worlds at the same time. In the one there is distance and in the other only nearness. To travel on the wings of love in this world you just have to move your thoughts to your desired destination and there you are!” I’m right there with you, Dad. 

P. S. Speaking of homes, Rory and I have just bought our first house! We get the keys tomorrow! 😄

Winter travels part 1: Thanksgiving, USA.

We've travelled a fair bit this winter, but we've hardly blogged at all! Sorry to keep you waiting. This post is the first in a series!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a big American holiday in late November, where you get together with family, eat a lot of food, and be thankful. It's basically a harvest festival.

For Talia's family, this is a big celebration, so we made a special effort to traverse the 9 time zones from Europe to Oregon. Since it's such a long trip, we spent two weeks there.

The Oregon coastline.

Marilyn, me, Maëlys, and Talia, keeping warm on the beach.

The big event, of course, was thanksgiving day. There were 21 of us in total - me, Talia, and Maëlys; Talia's three brothers and three sisters-in-law, and their children (three boys and two girls); one of Talia's cousins and her husband; another of Talia's cousins and her two children; and Talia's parents. Eight children, ranging from 4 months to 11 years, and thirteen grown-ups. What a party!

Maëlys's cousins learn how to spell her name.

Marilyn's famous dinner rolls!

Lemon meringue pie!

More pies, and a turkey.

Everyone assembled before the eating began! Not pictured: me.

Of course, for everyone except Talia's parents, it was their first time meeting Maëlys. (And she'd grown a lot since Talia's parents saw her last!) So there was lots of baby-holding and cooing.

Maëlys with Grandpa and Erik.

Maëlys with Hanna.

Maëlys with Mayela. (Note her thanksgiving-themed dress!)

Aunt Ashley reads a story to Travis, Maëlys, Sage, and Erik.

As a bonus, here's a picture of Hanna reading her parents the Scots translation of The Gruffalo, and explaining what words like "biled" and "ahint" mean.

Click to zoom in!

A lot of food was eaten, as is traditional, and it was fantastic to see everyone and have them meet Maëlys and compare baby stories. A refreshing trip to the new world!

Next up: Milan!

Have baby, will travel

Baby becomes world traveler

It's 8 am and my nearly 5 month old daughter is noisily sleeping in bed next to me. She fell asleep mid-suck during her last feeding an hour ago and I just kept her on our bed. She's been farting every few minutes. It's kind of cute, actually. (Add that to the list of things you never thought you'd say until becoming a parent!) Her pudgy little arms are stretched out in a T; she's enjoying taking up half of the big person bed since Rory is currently in Austin, Texas.

Maëlys gets her own seatbelt!

After spending two weeks in Scotland with his family for Christmas, Rory left us here to go be an academic and give a talk at the Linguistics Society of America conference. I'm still enjoying the kind assistance of his parents so that I don't have to take care of the baby on my own in Paris. I tried that for three days after our return from Oregon a month ago (we spent Thanksgiving with 20 family members!) and it was by far the hardest time I've experienced thus far with the baby. While Rory was at another conference in Milan, Maëlys and I were suffering from a 9-hour jetlag, and for nearly a week she was waking up every 15-30 minutes during the night and wailing. Nothing made it better. I could count my total hours of sleep that week on one hand. I have much more sympathy now for parents of children who sleep poorly. And for single parents. I felt like a train wreck.

But in all other respects, travelling with a baby has been easier than I anticipated. Maëlys has now been on five airplanes, 30 total hours of air travel, and she was an excellent passenger on four of them. The only exception was the 10-hour flight back from Seattle to Paris, which she didn't seem to like despite doing fine on the way over. We had a bassinet* at our disposal, but she barely slept anyway and was fussing in our arms most of the way. Still, she's had no problems on any of the flights with the change in altitude creating pressure on her ears, which was my big concern, and we've always had enough diapers and spare clothes to get us to our destination. For reference, we packed one diaper for every hour of travel and had plenty to spare. Just in case that's useful information for you.

Travel expectations
When I married a Scotsman, I knew my future would involve lots of travel. We've made it to visit our families in both the US and UK almost every year that we've been together. And I knew if we had kids it would mean plenty of plane, train, and automobile rides with our offspring. But whenever you tell someone you're taking a three-month-old on a 22-hour door-to-door trip, they unfailingly look at you with shock and pity and then say (perhaps with a hint of schadenfreude?), "That's going to be rough. It'll be even harder when they're older!" The effect these words have on an intrepid new parent is to terrify the pants off them. We already know it's not going to be easy. Long-distance travel is hard on anyone. But when seemingly every single person perpetuates the same fear-inducing attitude towards travel with babies, it makes the experience much worse for first time family travellers.

Can I make a suggestion? If someone tells you they're travelling with a young child, don't express how hard you think the journey will be, whether you have personal experience or not. Don't even assure them that it'll be fine now but worse when the kids are older. Instead be excited for them. Ask questions about what they'll see and do. If you do happen to have helpful tips from your own family travels, share them tactfully if they are welcome. And then when they get back, perhaps congratulate them on a successful trip and by all means empathize with them if they had a difficult journey. But help them stay positive both before and after their trip and they'll be more likely to enjoy the experience.

After all, for the last two months, Maëlys has been experiencing a deluge of new people, sights, smells, and sounds, all of which enrich her development and understanding of the world. She's experienced Oregon evergreen forests, rambunctious cousins, the salty sea air, sheep in Scottish pastures, a surprising number of rainbows, an assortment of accents, Christmas trees and lights, babies older and (two days) younger, grand- and great-grandparents, and cuddles from everyone under the sun. She has taken it all in stride, often with wide-eyed curiosity and an eager smile. For her to have those opportunities is worth any potential discomfort from the voyage. I, for one, am excited to travel with my baby and can't wait to share the delights of the world with her.


That's all for now! We're still trying to get caught up with our normal lives after spending five weeks away from Paris. Obviously, blogging has fallen by the wayside. We'll put up some pictures from our trips to Oregon and Scotland soon, I promise!


*A word about bassinets on planes: Delta Airlines has sleeping bassinets for babies under 20 pounds and 26 inches long (9 kg, 66 cm), but their policy on providing one is iffy. When Rory called to book our flights he was told they couldn't guarantee him a bassinet and it was first come, first served, so we should get to the airport three hours early and request it at the gate. We dutifully did this, and it worked fine in Paris. Coming home however, the Portland Delta staff told him the bassinet would go to whoever booked their flights first. The lady spent ages looking up this information, as there was another dad waiting in line just behind Rory for the same reason. Turns out we booked second, so it should have gone to the other family, but they had booked an extra seat as well and were willing to give us the bassinet. Hooray! Too bad Maëlys didn't want to use it. The moral of the story: find out your airline's policy on bassinets. Then be prepared to be told something completely different.

Party in the USA

Our last post was a month ago. How time flies when you're travelling internationally, moving to a new town, and entertaining guests! Today I'll just catch you up on some of our activities in the past month.

Amazing warm spring weather in Oregon

You may recall from my last post that I would soon be leaving France for a three-week stay in the US to visit my family in Oregon. This was my first time being back in America since we left eight months ago, and my first time seeing my family in nearly a year. Prior to this trip, I had finally been feeling more settled into Paris life and my conversational French was definitely improving. I was getting used to living in Europe. So I wasn't exactly desperate to leave France and the dismal political and social news coming out of America every day didn't help matters either.

So how was it going back home, you ask?

It was marvellous.

It may be trite to say so, but absence really does make the heart grow fonder. After so long in Paris, here are some of the things I appreciated most about America (and specifically Oregon):

My nephew's 2nd birthday party with a farm-themed cake

• Strangers smiling at me and making eye contact. And occasionally even complimenting me!
• Not having to prepare my sentences and figure out verb conjugations before speaking.
• Knowing where to go in grocery stores and what I can find in them.
• An abundance of gluten-free and dairy-free options at stores and restaurants. Vegan cheese! Vegan ice cream!
• Finding inexpensive and comfortable maternity clothes.
• Smoke-free air!
• Seeing mountains and trees and nature everywhere I go.
• Being able to see more than three stars at night.
• Catching up with friends and family.
• Hugs from people I love (rather than a semi-awkward kiss on both cheeks in the Parisian style).
• Best of all: being a real part of my family again. Playing with my nieces and nephews. Getting parenting advice from my siblings. Watching Downton Abbey with my parents. Actually being there.

Homemade eclairs for the baby shower

Baby shower gifts!

On top of all that, I got to walk along the beach, attend my nephew's second birthday party, eat lots of gluten-free chocolate cake and eclairs, get a massage and a pedicure, and generally soak up all the fun and relaxation I possibly could in three short weeks. One of the sweetest things was having a baby shower put on by my mom and sisters-in-law and receiving blessings, wisdom, and gifts from dear friends. I brought home an extra giant suitcase filled with all sorts of treasures and necessities for our little one.


I'm filled with gratitude for the incredible time I had back home. It was refreshing and reinvigorating, and I came back to Paris with a full heart.

Cello duets and interpretive dancing with my nieces   

Meanwhile, in Paris, Rory was hard at work on getting us moved into a new apartment. In a stroke of exceptional timing, his mum and sister came to visit him during this time and were able to help haul our belongings to the new place. Thanks, Fiona and Zoë!

The apartment is just outside of Paris in a suburb called Montreuil (“mon-troy”), and is a small, albeit tastefully decorated one-bedroom furnished flat. It's more comfortable than our old place: ground floor—not fifth, quiet neighborhood, only two other tenants in the building, and it's 200 euros cheaper each month. Our landlady, who owns the building and lives upstairs, is so kind and helpful that she even bought us a memory foam mattress topper when she learned I was pregnant, just so I would dormir bien. We're still settling in and working on building our nest for when the baby arrives this summer.

The kitchen in our new apartment. Still small, but no neon walls!

Whew! I think we're caught up now on the Turnbull goings-on. Tomorrow we're catching an early train to London to spend the day with a lovely friend of ours from Columbus, so we'll have more posts coming your way soon.







In conclusion, here's another picture of my niece. It'll make you smile.