Thanksgiving Is So L.A.

This year for Thanksgiving the police came and we had a kitchen fire.

In other words, just a typical day.

Since I moved to Los Angeles (three-and-a-half years ago) I have only been able to go home once for Thanksgiving. Instead, with a few friends from college, we have forged our own tradition, trying as hard as we can to bring the comfort of the Midwest to Hollywood.

And by comfort I mean lots of butter and ‘salads’ with cookies in them.

One of my friends has a home and a little boy so we all headed over to his house this year to cook, eat, and (let’s be honest) drink lots of wine.

The police came right at the beginning of our day. Someone had hit my friend Ben’s parked car so hard that it had shattered the bumper.

Let me say that again.

Ben’s car was PARKED. But the woman still managed to hit his car so hard that it slammed into the car in front of him and also SHATTERED HIS BUMPER.

Did I mention this was in a residential area?

The police came, we gave them cookies, and they gave the woman a ticket.

After that, I figured we were done with drama for the day.

I was wrong.

About an hour later, as I was idly stirring gravy over the stove and contemplating if I should abandon my wine and move on to hard liquor, I started to smell something that didn’t fit in with the savory stuffing aroma or the distinct cinnamon smell of the pie.

No…it smelled like…plastic? Burning plastic?

I looked down.

There, burning below me were flames.

A LOT OF FLAMES.

Someone had placed a ladle between the gas burners. The ladle had caught fire which had then caught the plastic child-splatter guard on fire.

I kept calm.

FIRE!!!!! THERE’S A FIRE!!! GUYS!! FIRE!!!!!

I picked up the flaming ladle and ran to the sink. Someone else broke off the flaming child safety guard and did the same thing. The whole kitchen filled with smoke.

Yep, it was definitely time to move to hard liquor.

Despite the police and the flames, we finally made it to dinner.

And it was delicious.

We might not have pulled it off as flawlessly as my family had always seemed to do, but the end result was just as lovely.

That night, after we had let the food settle, a few of us took turns jumping on their family trampoline.


It was dark, and the ocean made the air wet and chilly. It almost…almost…felt like fall in North Dakota. And as I jumped and jumped I thought about traditions.

When I moved to LA I had to walk away from my grandmother’s Thanksgiving desserts and my cousins’ annual backyard Thanksgiving football game.

And I realized, that first Thanksgiving away, that it was up to me to make new memories in this new place.

That if I was really going to try and call this place home, I needed to put down some roots. Let go of how much I wished I was home, and embrace the fact that I'm not.

That night, on the trampoline, I looked around at my friends and into the warm house where some were still eating pie and I thought, we did it.

We created something that I look forward to every year. We created a whole new tradition in a whole new place.

It might be messy and filled with too much wine and too little snow but it's ours.

And I am so thankful.