Since moving back to Seattle in 2022, I’ve written about each year’s Thanksgiving (2022, 2023 2024), so here’s 2025’s indigestion report.
Cooking for a crowd is too much work, so we always meet at a buffet. The place we’ve gone every year is now out of business, so this year’s Thanksgiving was at King Buffet in Renton, and checking the archives, I’m surprised I’ve never written about the place. I eat there once in a while, and it’s the best buffet in the metroplex (review coming soon).
Our meal was superb — far better than the annual so-so food at the bankrupt buffet. Better prices, too.
Roll call was similar to previous years: my mom was there, along with my sister Katrina and her forever boyfriend Max, my sister-in-law Anna (widow of my brother Ralph), and Anna’s son Ernest. My nephew George was there, along with his wife Aubrey, who always seems like a nice lady, but she’s super-shy like me, so we never much talk.
The eight of us gathered ’round a long rectangular table, ate a lot of food, and conversed for a couple of hours. I made an effort (successful!) to speak with everyone at the table, but none of the conversations were longer than a few sentences, and none of it went beyond small talk.
Mom’s in her 90s, me and the siblings are in our 60s and 70s, and the next generation (George, Aubrey, Ernest) are all in their 50s, so most of the conversation was about “the good old days,” and goiter and arthritis and such.
Mom has faded or mellowed, and between being harder and harder of hearing and slower and slower of mind, she really can’t participate in the conversation, unless you’re talking directly to her, loud and clear. It’s sad, but it also means she doesn’t get on my nerves as much as when she was younger and fiercer.
George is a Republican, but he only brought up politics in passing, and it was the dinner’s best moment, because Aubrey softly scolded him. “I don’t think anyone at the table agrees with any of that,” she said, and I promoted her from ‘like’ to ‘love’.
She’s mistaken, though. Ernest is also a Republican, but he was seated at the other end of the table, and the two Republicans never rubbed themselves together to make stupid sparks.
All in all plus pumpkin pie, it was a fine time, enjoyably lacking any drama. After the meal, Anna and Ernest offered me a ride home, as they always do, but when I said I’d rather take the bus, this time they didn’t insist.
I rode home on the #560 and then the #99, gazing out the window and thinking about dinner and family, and the people who hadn’t been there.
My brother Clay and his wife Karen never come to these events. They have dinner with their adult children and grandkids, but not this year. This year, Clay is in a hospital. Stomach issues.
My brother Dick and his wife Young-sook have dinner every Thanksgiving with her family, none of whom speak English. Dick always says he has a great time with them, though.
My sister Hazel is disabled, lives in a nursing home, has a heavily restricted diet, and she’s no longer able to sit in a wheelchair for more than an hour, so she can’t come.
Katrina’s best friend Adelle has no family locally so we’ve all adopted her, and she’s usually there, but this year she’s hospitalized. Abdominal issues.
My friend Leon also has no family nearby, so he usually comes, but he’s in the hospital, too. Lung issues.
“So-and-so is in the hospital” has become a line spoken and heard more and more often. The health and insurance rackets make a killing off us old folks.
Even more than the people who weren’t there, and the reliable feeling of mild disappointment after any family event, something was missing from this year’s Thanksgiving. Couldn’t figure out what it was, and wondered about it all the ride home, but the answer hit me soon as I’d sat on the shitter.
Thanksgiving in our family always starts with everyone one-by-one being asked, “What are you thankful for?” Dad did the asking when I was a kid, and with him being dead and all, someone else always asks it before we eat. But this year, nobody thought to ask.
It’s a corny question, and too often the answer is Jesus, but it’s tradition for the Hollands. Those few minutes, everyone grasping for an answer before anyone’s allowed to eat, have sometimes led to interesting conversations.
I missed that, and it ain’t quite Thanksgiving without the question and clichéd answers. If there’s a next year, I’ll do the asking if nobody else does.
11/30/2025
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