Growing up, we spent most Thanksgivings at Aunt Vickie’s. The adults dined around an elegant table set with crystal candlesticks and matching serving dishes, while we kids – my sister, brother, five cousins and I – were relegated to the back screened-in porch.
But we relished our privacy. There, nobody could monitor our mac and cheese-to everything-else ratio of food consumption, and we could easily slip into the kitchen to sneak early bites of dessert.
Mom always brought some home-baked sweet to add to the spread, an apple pie or cherry pound cake, for example. One year, she baked fortune cookies, which she filled with funny – albeit passive-aggressive – handwritten fortunes: “Admit it. You’re Wrong,” “You need to apologize” and “Someone is sorry for being snippy with you,” among others.
“I remember coming across the recipe in the newspaper,” Mom told me of the fortune cookies, confessing “I loved the idea, but I only had page one of the recipe. I couldn’t find page two – the one that told you how to get the paper in there without it sticking to the dough.”
That year, rather than telling the houseful of people that her clam-shaped cookies encapsulated paper prophecies, she left it as a surprise. And surprised we were, after eating every cookie – along with every fortune.
Twenty-five years have passed. Those of us once consigned to that kiddie table have grown up; we have moved all over the country. But some things never change.
Mom, for instance, long ago returned to baking pies and pound cakes – with recipes as foolproof as the moral to this story: This Thanksgiving, never underestimate the memories your children will make and carry with them for the rest of their lives. And never, ever underestimate the importance of the second page to your recipe.