Friday Guest Post by Trisha

Hey guys, Melanie is out this week, so I'm filling in for her.  It might be a bit early, but I've got a Thanksgiving post I want to share, and figured this was the perfect day to do it.
 

I’ve been helping make Thanksgiving dinner since I was nine.  We had just moved to Italy earlier that year, and it was the first time my mom was in charge of cooking for the holidays.  It was also the first year I got to help her cook anything, so I was on pins and needles with anticipation.

I was so excited that I spend most of the day scuttling around the kitchen, poking my head over the counter to see what we were supposed to next.  We burned a casserole, couldn’t get the turkey to thaw in the middle, and in general ruined half the dishes.  At one point my mom asked me to take a dish out of the oven, and I was so eager to help that I forgot to put on oven mitts.  Half way from oven to kitchen table, I realized my mistake and, deciding I was better off burning my hands than my bare feet, I ran across the room to deposit the dish.  My fingers blistered and bled, and I couldn’t hold a pencil (or a fork) for at least a week.

Despite all the missteps and blunderings, that Thanksgiving has never left my memory.  Every year I arrive at my parents’ house the night before to get the turkey in the brine, and my mom and I laugh and tell stories about all the cooking mistakes we’ve made over the years.  The time she mistook salt for sugar.  The year my sister set the stove on fire.  The year I dropped a twenty pound turkey into a bucket of brine and ended up with a mouthful of raw turkey salt water.  But above all, the first year we cooked Thanksgiving dinner together.

This year, my husband has to work the week of Thanksgiving.  So next week, I’ll be cooking in my own home, making a small meal for just us and the kids.  I don’t intend to forget the oven mitts, and I’ve made enough pies that I doubt I’ll burn the edges.  I’m even going to let my kids help mix things a few times.  But I’m going to miss the late pre-Thanksgiving talks with my mom.  No matter how great dinner turns out, I think my favorite will always be the year my mom and I made every mistake in the book.  I learned more from that one year of failure than I would have if we’d stumbled our way into a Rockwell-esque feast.

So I’m thankful for mistakes.  I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow, becoming a better person—a better mother, wife, daughter, writer, and cook—along the way.

It’s a little early, but happy Thanksgiving, Prosers!