Two Sets of Grandparents and One Thanksgiving Table

When both sets of grandparents ask for the same Thursday, the invitation is only the surface of it. Under the question "Will you be here for Thanksgiving?" sits a smaller, more particular wish that is rarely the same on both phone calls. One grandmother wants to hear the children in her house. The other wants to be handed the potatoes and told where to put them. A grandfather wants a football game on in the next room with a small head leaning on his arm. If you answer only the question, somebody gets a yes or a no. If you find the wish, you can often keep most of it even when the answer is no.

Thanksgiving this year is Thursday, November 26. My parents are in St. George, a little over four hours from us on a good day, and David's parents are in Bountiful, which is close enough that his mother has dropped off a pie and been home before it cooled. Both sets would like us at the table. Ben turned three last Friday and I taught third grade for five years, so I know what four hours in a car seat does to a child his size, and then the four hours home.

What are they actually asking for?

I find it useful to write down, for each side, the three things I think the invitation means, and then to be willing to be wrong about them. For my mother I wrote: she wants all of her grandchildren in one room at one time, she wants Emma there if Emma can come, and she wants to be the one doing the pie crusts because that's her part. My mother does wedding flowers for a living and has strong opinions about how things should be arranged, and the table is one of them.

David's side was a shorter list. His mother taught piano out of her front room for years and she'd like the children to play something for her after dinner, even if it is "Jingle Bells" in November. His dad would like to be useful.

None of that is a reason to go or stay. It only shows what can be moved to another day, since a pie crust lesson works on a Saturday and a recital works on any Sunday afternoon, and what's left is the Thursday itself, which can't be moved and has to be chosen.

Decide it together before anyone gets a phone call

The sentence I reach for here is in Genesis, and I want to be careful with it because it's short and people ask it to carry a lot.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis 2:24

The verse says a man leaves. It's usually applied to both spouses and I apply it that way, though that's the usual application and not what the verse spells out, and it says nothing at all about holidays. Neither does the Church's teaching on the family, so far as I can find. The Proclamation says extended families should lend support when needed, and I take that as a reason to keep both sides close, which is a different thing from a Thanksgiving schedule.

What I take from verse 24, lightly, is the order of operations. David and I settle it between us first. If I told my mother on Sunday that we were thinking it over and David's mother said something on Monday, the question would turn into a tug between two women who love us, when it ought to be a decision two adults made. So we did it on Wednesday at nine, in the twenty minutes we try to keep every week (we manage about five weeks in eight). I wrote about that habit in our date night with no sitter, and it works on the unromantic questions too.

We started with the drive, and between Ben's nap and Lily needing a stop and Caleb, who can't ride past two hours without announcing that he has to go, a St. George Thanksgiving means leaving on Wednesday and getting home Saturday with everyone worn out, while Bountiful means our own beds. That settled most of it before either of us said a word about loyalty.

Why the years have to be written down

A woman I taught with, I'll call her Rhonda, told me about her first two Thanksgivings as a married woman. Her mother lived in Idaho Falls and her husband's mother lived in Cedar City, which is a very long day apart. The first year they said yes to both. They ate turkey at noon in Idaho Falls and drove the rest of the day with a Pyrex dish of her mother's stuffing on Rhonda's lap, and when they got to Cedar City at nine that night the second dinner had been kept warm for hours and nobody wanted to say so. She told it to me with a kind of wonder, mostly about the stuffing, which she put in the freezer out of guilt and never ate. Nobody was angry, only tired. By Christmas it was a story the families told with different details.

The second year they wrote it on the calendar, Idaho Falls in even years and Cedar City in odd, with the other side getting the Saturday after. She says the writing was what did it. The first year, she said, they hadn't really decided anything at all, they had only put off deciding until the turkey was already in two ovens.

So ours is on the family calendar now, in pen, two years at a time. This year is Bountiful. Next year is St. George, with a note on the same page that if next year gets complicated we'll talk in October and not the week of. St. George also gets the days right after Christmas. I'd like to say all this cost us nothing, but it will cost my mother something on Sunday, and I'd rather she hear it plainly from me than work it out from my silence.

What I'll say on Sunday

We call both sets of grandparents after church anyway, so I don't have to invent an occasion. This is close to what I'll say to my mother, and I'd say the same to David's if the years were reversed.

"Mom, David and I have decided about Thanksgiving, and I wanted you to hear it from me before anybody else. We're staying up here this year and we'll be at David's parents'. I'm sorry, I know you wanted everyone together. Next year is yours, and we've already put it on the calendar. In the meantime I'd like to come down the Saturday after Christmas for three or four days, and I'd like to make pie crusts with you, your way."

I keep it to about that. Four reasons would sound like an argument and she hasn't asked me to defend myself, so it's what's decided and one plain sentence of why and what I can offer in its place. If she cries I let her cry and say I know.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we have to alternate every year?

No rule says so, and some families keep Thanksgiving in one house and give the other side Christmas every year. What matters is that you both agreed and that it's written down somewhere.

What if one set of grandparents is much closer?

Then closeness is a fact and doesn't have to be a ranking. David's parents see the kids more often because Bountiful is near, and I try not to let that turn into "Linda gets Thanksgiving" in my head. A four-hour drive is a cost the children pay, and I think it's fair to count it.

Should we just host and have everyone come to us?

Maybe some year. I wouldn't ask my parents to make the drive up just because it solves my calendar, and I'd want to hear what they'd like before I offered.

How do we say no without hurting feelings?

You probably can't spare all of it. Say the decision first, then one reason, then an offer with a day on it, since "soon" doesn't count.

Is it selfish to put my own children's schedule first?

I don't think so. Naps and bedtimes are part of what you're responsible for, and grandparents who raised children tend to remember that.

Before I go

I found a rock in one of Ben's boots by the back door this morning, a smooth gray one about the size of a walnut. He says it's a potato.

with love, Melissa