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Coming Home

Mona Alvarado Frazier

   
Thanksgiving was everything that is important to me: family, love, food. I shared the day in two places: my home and then 200 miles away.

Right before Halloween my mom went to see my sister in Fresno and promptly decided to stay a while and visit with her daughter, grandchild and great grandchildren. She had a ball. Everyone loves ‘nana’ and the grandchildren (young adults) took turns taking her shopping: from 99 cents store to Macy’s and everywhere in between.

A week ago we spoke on the phone. My sister called me from Costco and gave the cell phone to my mom, who wanted to know what sizes my boys wear.She was Christmas shopping. There was some audio difficulty and then she said, “I don’t know how to use these 1 phones.” (iPhone). Before she hung up she said she knew she had been gone a long time, but she was a ‘prisoner of love,’ and she was staying at my sister’s for Thanksgiving.

My mom is in her eighties and I have spent every single Thanksgiving with her present. Her declaration surprised me since my brother and other sister live in the same county as she does. We all spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together, except this year my Northern Californian sister didn’t want to come down to Southern California. Her husband died two years prior right before Thanksgiving Day. I understood and decided that all of my family would drive up for the holiday. That plan went out the window when both my kids had to work Black Friday on Thanksgiving Day.

My kids were a little bummed out about this and I was a lot bummed out, but we tried to make the best of it. I even looked for the Granny Smith Apple and sweet potato recipe to duplicate. That’s my mom’s special dish. I was already missing the green beans with bacon and almonds that my NC sister makes every Thanksgiving.

We had an early bird special at my house for my family, my brother whose kids said they didn’t want to go to NC if their cousins weren’t going and my other sister, who was too sick to go to NC. We had a good time, said  our ‘thankfuls,’ and talked about being without our mother and other sister for the first time in our life.I know I’ve been blessed to have such a tight knit family and also to still have my mother around.

After the meal, I set out for a quick twenty minute walk with the dog, packed my bag, kissed my kids goodbye, and hopped in the car for the 200 mile drive to see my mom and my sister’s family for Thanksgiving. It’s a boring drive up the central valley of California until one gets closer to Fresno where the trees leaves are yellow gold, orange, red, and burnished copper. We have palm trees and Eucalyptus where I live.

It was dark when I arrived, the air a nippy forty-six degrees, and the house smelled like sweet potato and apple pie when I opened the door. My nephews were on their second round of Thanksgiving dinner. The new baby was now a smiling chubby eight month old hanging on his pretty mom’s hip. My sister smiled and said the coffee’s hot and the pie’s ready.My mom jumped out of her chair and hugged me. It was good to be home again.

Family, Shrinking holidays, Thanksgiving

The Incredible Shrinking Thanksgiving Holiday

Mona Alvarado Frazier
Every year the window for Thanksgiving Day shortens. Philosophically, we can say that thanks giving should be every day and that is something to strive for but if we talk just about the holiday, wouldn’t you agree that it has shrunk to a blip between Halloween candy and Christmas trees, with a short layover on Black Friday?



When I reach back into my childhood, Thanksgiving began a week before the day and ended when we returned to school after the holiday. During the week before, we drew pictures in class, learned what American history said about Thanksgiving, wrote essays and went to Mass.

On the day of Thanksgiving, I remember the knock on the back porch and finding a cardboard box filled with a cold whole chicken, apples, cans of green beans, a sack of flour, and potatoes. My mom looked relieved and the rest of us wondered who put the box at our door. Our holiday began that way for several years when we lived on Felicia Court in the projects. Between the neighbors and relatives, there were plenty of vegetables but they tasted so much better with roast chicken. I don’t remember anything other than the aromas, the family, and our artistic renderings of turkeys and pilgrims stuck on the refrigerator door.


By the time I was ten, I didn’t want to open the back door when I heard a knock on Thanksgiving Day. I was embarrassed. The next year my mom went to the church to pick up a food basket the night before. The next year she was able to buy her own chicken. After that, we moved up to Rose Park and we began celebrating the day at the relative who had a house, not a small apartment. That’s when I remember the noisiness and laughter of extended family, playing with cousins, sneaking more pie, and the energy from the festivities.

Once we had our own families, our holiday began after work on Wednesday night and ended with collapsing on the couch for the weekend. We alternated between homes, shared the cooking and the leftovers. Now it was whether using foil, butter, or oil was better for the moistest turkey, or which pie was the best. We ended the day with a family basketball game. If you could pick up a ball, you played. And that’s the way it was for several years—a solid ritual.

The plan this year was for my siblings in Ventura County to pack up the families and celebrate Thanksgiving in Fresno with my sister. My mom has been there since Halloween and we were to bring her back after Thanksgiving. You know what happens with the best-laid plans.

This year the holiday shrunk so severely, that our Thanksgiving Day plans are in the air. Two of my three kids are working on Black Friday, the day before turkey day, one at 8 p.m and the other at midnight. Since our time together shriveled to a few hours, I decided that our family would go out to a restaurant to celebrate. That’s been my secret wish for many years.

Now my brother’s kids want him to stay in VC. Yesterday, my sister had a major unplanned expense she can’t go to Fresno either. This is the first time in our life that we may spend Thanksgiving Day without my mother. I get a lump in my throat when I think about it. Leave my kids here in VC and go to Fresno or not? And what if my mom’s not around for next Thanksgiving? The questions whirl around me and my feelings bounce around in my chest.

Since I can remember, Thanksgiving Day was spent with family and that’s what it is about, not the chicken or the turkey, not whose house we visited, or what game we played. 


What if my family goes to Fresno on a Wednesday morning and comes back Thursday afternoon? Or the weekend? That might work, because maybe thanks giving day is any day we choose.