The Po Show

Sacrifice

I love Thanksgiving. I love the traditional food so much (and we really don't deviate from the traditional menu, though I make green beans with butter and pepper rather than THE green bean casserole). I used to order the turkey dinner at Koo Koo Roo all the time because it had all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes.

This year, my turkey was absolutely freaking perfect. The moistest, juiciest, most delicious turkey I have ever eaten. And *I* made it! It took an hour longer to cook than I had anticipated, but it was worth the wait. My gravy, made with the copious drippings of said turkey, was absolutely top-notch too. Ross had wanted to just have the Trader Joe's gravy I'd bought for later in the left-overs cycle, but I am so glad I made my own.

Though the food was delicious, our meal itself was far from Norman Rockwell. Matthew got incredibly agitated as we sat down to eat, despite numerous reminders that he didn't have to eat anything he didn't want to eat. He said he wanted to try some turkey (having said all day how good it smelled as it roasted), but got very upset when a small piece was put on his plate. We told him again that he didn't have to eat it. He could have bread (plain french bread that he loves) or green beans (which he used to love, but has recently gone off of, having eaten them every single day for several months). He could wait till later to have his pizza (it was only 4:30, and he'd had lunch at the usual time, so he wasn't starving). We told him repeatedly that he didn't have to eat anything he didn't want, that the main point of the meal was that we were all together and thankful that we had each other. He spent the whole time sitting backwards in his chair making angry noises, tapping the back of his chair, refusing to talk to anyone. He was overwhelmed, not sure about why he was so upset, unsure of whether he wanted to try any food or not, and pissed off beyond belief that we were asking him to stay at the table with the rest of us.

I alternated between trying to coax him out of his funk and trying to ignore him, but neither really worked. It all seemed really unfair to Tessa, who tried EVERYTHING, ate a mountain of sweet potatoes, a huge bowl of green beans, and two servings of turkey. I walked the fine line of praising her for trying everything and thanking her for her compliments about the food, and not making too big a deal of it because I knew it would further upset Matthew. As soon as he was excused from the table, he went into his room and closed the door and didn't come out for hours, saying he wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat.

There was a front page article in the New York Times the other day that really annoyed me. The headline was something like, "To Buy Children's Gifts, Mothers Do Without." The mother featured in the opening anecdote was buying the toys her four year old wanted for Christmas. Due to harder economic times, to do so she had to forego ****buying the new season designer jeans she has been coveting***. Are you freaking KIDDING me??? Mothers all over the world go without EATING so that their children can eat. That's sacrifice. The article continued to talk about how women's apparel sales have been down, as a result of mothers cutting back on their own clothing in order to buy holiday gifts for their kids.

I have always done this. My clothes are almost exclusively from church sales or from the 70% off past season stuff at Lands' End. I don't have a shirt that cost more than $10; most were around $5. And I do NOT consider that a sacrifice. Certainly not a front page news-worthy sacrifice. It's just life.

But having to choke down my food, food that I spent all day preparing and that I wait all year to eat, because my son is ruining Thanksgiving dinner (and I can't actually *say* "Stop it, you're ruining Thanksgiving dinner!"), and having to remain calm and supportive about it because he is just not capable of dealing with his feelings, that is a sacrifice. I'm usually sanguine about having to work around all of my kids' issues, letting go of what I want because of what they need, but this just made me so angry and sad.