A few months ago, I watched an old movie -- and by old I mean from 2003 -- called Pieces of April. It's about a girl, April (Katie Holmes), who invites her estranged family for Thanksgiving. April has partly pink hair and an overall punky appearance and lives in a seedy apartment in New York City with her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke), who is black. April doesn't really know how to cook, and then her oven breaks. Also, Bobby has gone on a secret mission to borrow a suit to impress April's family, and it's not going well. The movie shifts between April's endeavors and her family's strained conversation as they drive from Pennsylvania to see her. We watch April bang on one apartment door after another to beg to borrow an oven, then listen as her mother (Patricia Clarkson) laments about April's awful ways even as she pukes up her guts at a rest stop. It's from her chemo because she has cancer. But being sick hasn't softened her, nor has the intervention of April's well-meaning father (Oliver Platt).
Having a front-row seat to April's plight is unsettling. It's hard to watch her put herself out there only to meet one obstacle after another, her Katie Holmes girl-next-door-appeal seeping through her tough exterior. One of her "helpers" is played by a withering Sean Hayes; another is more kindly but disabuses her of the notion that the best cranberry sauce comes from a can. (I'm with April on this one; it's just not Thanksgiving without that JELL-O-like substance for smothering otherwise tasteless turkey.) As April struggles to put dinner on the table, her family struggles with its reservations, at one point going so far as to throw in the dish towel and stop at a diner.
For me, the low point is when April tears down her carefully handmade decorations. There's something so vulnerable about them in their crepe paper homeliness, the way they expose and then shatter the optimism that April clings to despite the odds. Because this movie takes all the tension that percolates within families during the holidays and puts them in a pressure cooker -- pun intended. April's poverty, her mother's death sentence, and the stereotypes that April's family unfairly and inaccurately ascribes to Bobby deepen the fault lines that spread between them. But these are also the reasons why they need to break bread together. Pieces of April may not be Planes, Trains, and Automobiles or A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. But in its own offbeat and, yes, dreary way, it tells us everything we need to know about this holiday.
That said, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that I'm breaking my quarantine again to have Thanksgiving dinner with my parents. It'll just be the four of us, including the husband, but it's kind of ironic that I'm busting out now that the pandemic is surging again. As recently as just a few weeks ago, I stayed firmly put, even opting out of my sister's birthday. Everyone, the husband included, was beginning to worry about me and my refusal to engage with the outside world, however safely. Then fate did its thing, and my work laptop broke, forcing me to go to the office to get it fixed. It was a nail biter of an experience. But I got through it -- with some humor, I like to think -- and learned that I'm stronger than I know. The truth is, being an introvert/loner/whatever who's afraid of stuff means that I depend on my family a lot, even when I think I don't need anyone. They're more than my family; they're my friends. So I'm extremely thankful for them, on Thanksgiving and always.
Okay, now that the serious stuff's over, it's time to explain what's up with this pie crust. As you know, I don't like to cook or bake. I find it boring, tedious, and, on some level, out to get me. So, I'm all about the pre-prepared everything, and Pillsbury pie crust is no different. It also happens to taste great -- a little salty, a little sweet -- and, in my opinion, is even better than the homemade kind. So, I smashed it down into my pie plates and fluted the edges and didn't balk (too much) when the KitchenAid mixer-made pumpkin goop sloshed over the sides and obscured the crust completely. Because holidays aren't about presentation (although I do have a mask to match my dress). They're about being together. Laughing and talking and wearing our masks when we're not shoveling in cranberry shaped like a can.
Whatever your plans, I wish you a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving. And all the misshapen food you can eat.