Kiwi Thanks

Kiwi Thanks

More, Please

I planned to skip Thanksgiving in New Zealand this year. We did it last year. I cooked the Best Turkey Ever, and celebrated with my American kids, Kiwi friends, Spanish friends and Pete’s folks. Pete was absent. He was flying with a student when clouds and strong winds forced them to land on the other side of the mountains. They safely returned four days later. We saved Pete a few scraps of turkey and a sliver of pumpkin pie.

It's a Luxury

This year, as I settle into the new-old-Kiwi life, I’m living as someone who means to stay.  As Someone on a Budget. It means saying ‘no’ to opportunities where I’d previously said, ‘yes.’

Thanksgiving is a luxury. It’s not a Kiwi holiday. Turkeys cost fifty to more than one-hundred dollars, depending on size. Preparing the entire dinner, providing wine, other drinks and dessert could easily cost two to three times the same meal in the States.

Also, our rental house includes a small galley kitchen with miniature sink, oven with no ventilation fan (we open a window), and little counter space. I’d say it’s a good food re-heating kitchen, but the microwave is perched high atop the fridge. Someday I’m guaranteed to spill hot soup or coffee over my head. The kitchen’s separate from the living room, which means you can’t talk to guests as you prepare food. If you’re not organized, you’ll spend the evening isolated from the very people you want to see.

Thanksgiving’s too pricey and too tough to pull off, so I’ll skip it this year.

In our DNA

But the holiday is in-built. Like salmon swimming upstream, ex-pat or traveling Americans cruise aisles of foreign grocery stores, wandering among Biltong (a kind of meat jerky) in South Africa; Ardennes ham in Luxembourg and tortillas in Mexico, searching for ingredients to replicate their favorite annual meal.

Two years ago in South Africa, I first bought a chicken, then a turkey, green beans, sweet potatoes, pumpkin (though not my precious Libby’s in a can), pre-made pie crust and gravy. I spent nearly all day sweating in a hot kitchen while the sun shone outside in 80-degree weather. I even fried onions to sprinkle atop the green bean casserole (in reality, I think I laid the onions on top like slugs; they never got crispy enough to crumble). I forgot whipping cream and packed the kids back into the car for a store trip. 

We waited eagerly for our hosts to return. They shuffled in around six-thirty, when 10-year-old Ben told me, in his clipped South African accent, “I vomited at school today.” Does this mean you’re not eating Thanksgiving with us? Most of that year’s dinner went home with the cleaning lady. I told myself she and her family loved it.

Change of Heart

A couple weeks ago, something superseded my resistance to Kiwi Thanksgiving 2012. Maybe it was residual patriotism following the Presidential election; true thanks for living here with my PAHT-nah; intense gratitude for health and surroundings that grow more beautiful with warmer, longer days and most of all, for love.

Or maybe I just wanted another excuse to eat pounds of pumpkin pie.

Whatever the reason, American tradition overrode new migrant sensibility like a Hummer rolling over a dune buggy. Small kitchen? My friend, Laura, in Spokane, feeds a convent’s worth of nuns from a space about half the length of a school bus aisle. Cost? Potluck is as much tradition in New Zealand as rugby. If you’re asked to ‘bring a plate,’ you bring a plate of food.  

I pureed my objections like I pulverize pumpkin. Pete and I invited a dozen friends to join us for Thanksgiving one day after the American holiday. We included new friends, not-so-new friends, Kiwi natives plus others who came by way of Germany, England, Luxembourg, Scotland, France…plus us Yanks. Our friends brought enough food and wine for two more Thanksgivings - a sumptuous spread including cheeses and meats, broccoli casserole, whole-wheat rolls, baked kumara (sweet potatoes), salad, cranberry sauce, gravy... I baked three pumpkin pies, one turkey and two chickens (which we didn't need). 

Circle of Gratitude

We sat on the deck overlooking an expanse of blue ocean on a surprisingly windless evening. We drank too much champagne (me), ate too much homemade bread and blue cheese (Finley) and took turns giving thanks. Thanks for surviving divorce, whooping cough, re-settlement, underemployment, cancer, separation and facial hair. For friendship, new jobs, successful kids, improving health and abiding love. 

(I later remember myriad big and small things Pete has done for us and privately thank him for changing my oil, cutting Finley’s hair, jump-starting a dead battery, fixing stuff and washing dishes. We regularly express gratitude for these partner-ly acts of devotion).

Too much hassle/No one does it/why should we? Because we need to share stories, to feed our hearts and heads while filling our bellies. And next year, we hope to expand our table to include more friends, more stories and – what the heck? – more pumpkin pie.