Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving marks the point at which Brett Bohlinger’s attempt to restore a family celebration meets the changed reality of her family. She sets out to reproduce her late mother Elizabeth Bohlinger’s traditional meal at Elizabeth’s house, but the holiday becomes something else: a day Brett faces alone after her relationship with Andrew ends, then turns toward people at Joshua House by bringing them dinner. The shift from a family table to a shared meal makes Thanksgiving a measure of both loss and the care Brett can still offer.

A Holiday Meant to Restore Home

Brett proposes celebrating Thanksgiving at Elizabeth’s house and preparing all of her mother’s traditional dishes. The choice is more than a convenient venue. Andrew’s loft is technically his, not theirs, and Brett recognizes that Elizabeth’s brownstone is the only place that has felt like home to her lately. The holiday therefore carries an expectation of belonging: cooking in her mother’s kitchen might let Brett briefly recover the shape of a family celebration after her mother’s death.

The preparations begin the night before Thanksgiving. Brett and Andrew load the car with a fresh turkey, three DVDs, two bottles of wine, and Andrew’s laptop; she has already stocked the kitchen with the rest of what they will need. Ice makes the car skid as they leave the garage, and Andrew challenges her insistence on holding dinner at Elizabeth’s house. His suggestion that they could eat at the loft sharpens the disagreement beneath the practical inconvenience. For Brett, the destination is bound up with the difference between a place that feels like home and a place that belongs to Andrew.

Once they reach the brownstone, the work of cooking briefly restores a familiar atmosphere. Brett finishes the cranberry sauce and puts her pecan pie in the oven; Miles Davis plays while firelight and Elizabeth’s Venetian lamps warm the living room. The setting seems to offer continuity, but Andrew sits on the sofa working on his laptop and checking what has come onto the housing market. The domestic scene holds both comfort and strain: Brett recreates her mother’s holiday surroundings while the couple’s shared future remains unsettled.

The Celebration Comes Apart

By Thanksgiving morning, Brett and Andrew have broken up. The dinner she had planned as a family occasion is no longer taking place as intended, and Brett returns to Elizabeth’s house unwilling to spend the day alone with the image of herself cooking for one. Her distress makes the holiday’s changed circumstances tangible: the gathering she had prepared for has vanished between one evening and the next.

She clears the dining table and carefully folds Elizabeth’s treasured tablecloth and napkins. Her mother had bought the hand-embroidered linens on a trip to Ireland three years earlier and insisted that they be used at every family celebration. Handling them brings Brett to tears; the loss is not only of her mother, but of the shared occasions in which those objects had a place. The linens preserve a repeated family ritual even as the people who gave it meaning are no longer gathered around the table.

Brett nonetheless completes the meal. Through her grief, she stuffs the turkey, prepares the sweet potato casserole, peels potatoes, and makes fruit salad. Three hours later, the finished turkey has crisp golden skin, and the casserole carries the familiar aromas of nutmeg and cinnamon. She packs the food, including cranberry sauce and pies, into picnic baskets and cardboard boxes from the basement. The painstaking preparation turns a cancelled celebration into something she can still give, even though its original family purpose has collapsed.

From the Family Table to Joshua House

On her way, Brett calls Sanquita at Joshua House. Sanquita is waiting at the door when Brett arrives, and Brett hands her a basket of Thanksgiving dinner before returning to the car for more. The meal’s destination changes the meaning of the work: food made from Elizabeth’s traditional recipes is no longer being served at the family gathering Brett hoped to revive, but is being delivered to Sanquita and the people at Joshua House.

This gesture follows a day in which Brett has confronted her fear of being alone and her doubts about whether she is lovable after the breakup. The movement from folding her mother’s linens in tears to carrying baskets out to Joshua House does not erase that grief. Instead, the holiday redirects Brett’s attention without pretending the loss has been repaired. Its traditional dishes remain connected to Elizabeth, but their value now also lies in being shared beyond the family that once gathered for them.

Thanksgiving in the Life-List Timeline

The holiday sits within the larger timetable imposed by Elizabeth’s life list. Brett must complete at least one goal by the end of the month, and the entire list by September thirteenth of the following year. Her anxiety about being thirty-four and risking a life without Andrew gives the deadline personal force: completing the goals is not an abstract challenge but part of a period in which her relationship, home, and plans for the future are changing.

Later in the same stretch of the list’s chronology, as March approaches, Brett counts five of ten goals completed and sees only six and a half months remaining before the September deadline. She still hopes to establish a relationship with her father and considers falling in love, having a baby, buying a horse, and finding a beautiful house unresolved. Thanksgiving thus falls amid a compressed season of bereavement, separation, and uncertain plans, rather than functioning as an isolated festive interlude. Its decisive turn is modest but concrete: Brett cannot restore the family celebration she imagined, yet she can carry its food to others.