Thanksgiving always starts out for me with my insides churning. I’m unable to keep anything down because I know, starting at 9:30, I will be running a race, and races make me happily nervous. My favorite race is the Great Barrington Turkey Trot, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and Great Barrington is my hometown. Depending on my fitness level, I run the 2-mile or 6-mile version of the event, which has started and ended, for the past 43 years, at Simon’s Rock College. Last year, I did two miles, because my knees had been acting up, and I was afraid of pushing things. But I ran well and finished with plenty of time to cheer for my husband and children, walking and jogging at intervals behind me.
In 2018, I ran the 6-miler in sub-zero temperatures and met my goal to do it in under one hour, clocking in at 59:55. I would never have run six miles in frigid cold on my own. I was only able to do it because I was warmed by the presence of so many other people doing the same crazy thing. Some of them I’d known all my life, but most of their faces were unfamiliar. Together we cheerfully endured the hilly course, passing beside farms and fields and streams, icy wind whipping our faces.
My father used to push me to be precise about the minute I’d be crossing the Turkey Trot finish line. He wanted to see me but didn’t want to be waiting in the cold. I always told him, “Be there at 10:15.” I knew he drove and parked and walked slowly and would likely have to wait just a few minutes by the time I crossed the line at about 10:33.
No matter how fiercely my legs were rebelling against the exertion, I’d always sprint for that final stretch, because I knew I’d be carried along by the spectators I saw standing and clapping there, like dad, smiling, in his huge dark blue parka and Russian hat.
“Nice job, babe!” He’d always say, though he had not had personal experience with running since his Army training days 50 years earlier. He did, however, have an ongoing relationship with donuts, and enjoyed his own Turkey Trot ritual of a donut and chat with race organizer Tim Minkler inside the Kilpatrick Center. I always skipped the donut and treated myself afterward instead to a large mocha latte at Fuel, because they were always open on Thanksgiving Day. My ritual was then complete, and I could go home to cook, feeling refreshed and accomplished.
My dad’s not here anymore. I just read on Facebook that Fuel will be closed on Thanksgiving, because of a payment system crash. And, of course, the Turkey Trot is cancelled. The countdown to its return is already on, according to the event’s website. It’s just 11 months, 4 weeks, 2 days, and 19 hours away. https://turkeytrotrace.com
In 2020, like everyone else, I mutely accepted the erasure of the ways I love to chart my year. In April, there was no Easter egg hunt on my street, in May no candy thrown from fire trucks at the Memorial Day parade, in June no night of karaoke for my birthday, no starry nights on the lawn at Tanglewood in July or August, no whoosh of bicyclists around Taconic Avenue at the start of the Josh Billings in September, and no Naumkeag Haunted House with my kids and their friends as the ghouls. Those things all vanished this year, and I let them go.
Other things I have refused to relinquish. My kids’ school couldn’t hold their annual ice cream social on the last day of school, so I organized the delivery of 112 SoCo Creamery ice cream cups to children all over the county. I invited the neighborhood to show up in force for the Monument Mountain High School Class of 2020 graduation car parade down Route 41. There would be no end-of-summer Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony concert at Tanglewood, so I invited friends for a picnic on the lawn of The Mount, and played the Ninth on my phone for accompaniment.
I also refused, initially, to accept the loss of the Turkey Trot. Earlier this fall, I started brainstorming ways to replicate a scaled-down version of the race on one of the dirt roads near my house. How hard would that be? All you need is a phone timer, a table with cups of water, and a good attitude. I thought I would invite a dozen or so friends to join, and kids could walk, and adults could run, and we’d all gather for hot chocolate afterward. But the more I thought about how it would feel in the moment, the clearer it became that my ersatz Turkey Trot would in no way approximate the Turkey Trot I know and love, the Turkey Trot I’ve participated in as a prelude to every Thanksgiving dinner for 25 years. It could not serve a sacred time-keeping purpose. It would just be one more reminder of how impossible it is these days to do things well.
Next year, I will host a huge, karaoke-themed birthday party, and invite everyone I know. Next year, I will have a picnic at Tanglewood every week. Next year, I’ll get my team back together for the Josh Billings. Next year, I’ll attend as many parades as possible, and cheer as loud as I can. At next year’s Turkey Trot, I will run the six-miler, even if we’re in the grip of an ice storm. Next year, won’t we look with new eyes at all the things we had lost and regained? Won’t we consider them with a sense of awe, and an awareness of how lovely and fragile and temporary they are? I don’t believe we will take them for granted again.
As for this year, we are all just doing our best. My mom was going to host dinner in her dining room, but she doesn’t feel comfortable with that idea now. We’re doing a quick toast in the backyard, and then taking our turkey to go. I’m sad about this, as I’ve been about every loss. Looking back on this unhappy year, the losses appear to me now in a decisive, chronological accumulation. The pandemic took and takes so much. We couldn’t even sing, or run, or cheer, or listen to music together. Now we can’t even share dinner together. Some of us will never have the chance to share dinner with a lost loved one again.
But I am grateful, in spite of it all, especially for our resilience and responsiveness. Our kids are tougher than we realized. They will guide us through this to the other side. I so wish we could all sit together around a big table, take one another’s hands, and have my eight-year-old nephew take the lead, as he always does for special occasions, in reciting the version of grace our kids learned in preschool. “Earth who gives to us this food. Sun who makes it ripe and good. Dear Earth, dear Sun, by you we live, our loving thanks to you we give.”
Well, there you are. This year, I’m giving you the words to go.
