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34 NOVEMBER 2019
A Place at the Table Embrace change
during a holiday that celebrates tradition.
By Kat Kinsman
THE ESSAY
I ALMOST CHICKENED OUT on going to Mama Diva’s that
November day in 1998, and my chest seizes up when I think
about it now. Here’s me then: 26, newly-ish single, broke as
hell, attempting to breathe. I’d crash-landed in New York City
a couple years prior, jumped without a plan or a parachute,
and was just now clawing up toward daylight after post-grad
depression dunked me under and pinned me there. Through
some miracle—likely my willingness to work dirt cheap—I’d
scammed my way into a design job at an online city guide, and
even more shockingly, Lissa, the platinum-cool, leather-skirted
music editor, befriended me to the point of asking what I was
doing for Thanksgiving.
The holiday had never held much warmth or pleasure for
me, just the specter of pallid turkey, mounds of gravy-slicked
dishes to be scrubbed, other people’s stress to quell, and tongue-
clucking relatives wondering when I’d wise up and go back to
school for something useful and lucrative, like teaching, and
maybe stop dressing so weirdly while I was at it. I was toler-
ated—barely—but my presence at the table felt like a ticked box
on someone else’s list, rather than something anyone was hun-
gering for. Boxed stuffing, canned pumpkin pie, me.
Something needed to change. Because I had.
Of all the distinctly American holidays, Thanksgiving is the
most hidebound. On its face, it’s all about celebrating gratitude
for present blessings. But at the heart is something unbending
and often uncomfortable: nostalgia for a very particular way of
being that doesn’t always make room for the reality of who’s at
the table that year and how they need to be fed. What should be
familiar and joyful can be alienating and painful. People grow
up, suffer loss, make new family, and settle into their skin to
become the ever-evolving person they are happiest being. If the
script remains unaltered, often out of habit, it can chafe against
illustration by ABBEY LOSSING
