The Thanksgiving puzzle

Assembling Thanksgiving dinner for 16 people requires bringing together many different pieces, and it works best when everyone likes each other.

Last night the family sat down in my daughter and  son-in-law's living room to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, arms reaching past each other to grab another edge piece or a bit of blue, and this morning in their kitchen we began putting together the pieces of our family Thanksgiving dinner.

 
The old guy fried bacon for breakfast while the young guy engineered a towering pile of potato-peeling. My daughter and I traded off time with the power mixer: she's baking custard pies and I'm making masses of dough for pumpkin yeast rolls.

Who will do the dishes? Don't worry, we'll have enough dirty dishes to give everyone a chance. Who will run out to the store to pick up a few forgotten ingredients? The young men will handle that. What about moving the furniture to make room for extra tables? We have enough strong arms to help.

I'm backing up to move the mixer when I suddenly bump into my son (oops). I spill pumpkin and sugar, adding to the palimpsest of stains on a well-used page in my favorite cookbook. Flour sprays and butter drips, but they're just more pieces of the puzzle.

In a few hours the guests will arrive, bringing the rest of the pieces: sweet potatoes and pies, salads and cranberry sauce and a coffee-maker. And let's not forget the turkey! It's a well-traveled bird--we smoked it Tuesday evening and transported it up here yesterday.


Many strong arms eager to help are bringing all the pieces together, but the puzzle isn't complete until we all sit down around the table and bow our heads to offer thanks to the author of our feast--the final piece in the puzzle.