Thanksgiving at the Club

Normal people have Thanksgiving dinner at grandmother's house. At least, that's they way we always picture it. For the past few years, our Thanksgiving dinners have been major events, with the entire extended family at the Yale Ward building. But after Grandma died, some of the fun went out it. Who can forget the first Thanksgiving dinner without her when Grandpa started crying, then we all started crying, and then everything was so sad we all went home. It must have been something of a downer for the full-time missionaries who joined us for dinner that year.

But this year was not our first year without having the family together for Thanksgiving. Once, for reasons I no longer remember, some of us had Thanksgiving dinner at Cedar Ridge in the Grand Canyon while others were off somewhere else. And some of our best memories are the two Thanksgiving dinners we had at the Arizona Club when no extended family was town.

This year was destined to be one of those years when the family scattered. The Bowlers went with Chris' family to Williamsburg. Spencer, the Rowans and the J's all traveled to Ohio and had dinner at the Lesan's. And Kathleen and I went to Greenwich to visit the Davis's.

It didn't seem worth the trouble to put together a big turkey dinner at the Davis's apartment for just the four of us, so we did what we had done in Scottsdale on those quieter Thanksgivings - we had dinner at the club.

Sami linked up with us in New York and we had a lovely dinner at the Harvard Club. What could be more appropriate than a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at that most traditional of New England institutions, the Harvard Club! As Lizzie noted, it was the best Thanksgiving ever!