You can always tell Thanksgiving is coming in the River Region because somebody — usually a sister with a clipboard personality — starts a family group text titled something cheerful like “Turkey Day Logistics!!!” with three exclamation points and zero mercy.
It begins politely. “Who’s hosting?”
Then: “Who’s bringing rolls?” Then the real Olympic event opens: 17 adults, four time zones of opinion, and one cousin who hasn’t cooked since the Bush administration volunteering to “just bring drinks,” which somehow means a two-liter of Diet Coke and a story about traffic on I-65.
Aunt Linda has claimed the sweet potato casserole with the marshmallows, which means Aunt Carol will claim the sweet potato casserole WITHOUT the marshmallows, which means we will have two nearly identical orange rectangles on the table and a cold war that lasts until New Year’s. Somebody’s gluten-free. Somebody’s dairy-free. Somebody’s “just trying to eat clean,” which in November means they will still take a dinner roll the size of a softball and look personally betrayed by gravy.
Then the assignments start flying like pecan pie crumbs. “Can you do the green beans?” “I ALWAYS do the green beans.” “I thought Mom did the green beans.” “Mom’s doing the turkey. Or is Dad doing the turkey? Dad, are you doing the turkey?”
Dad has been “muted for the holidays” since 2019 and is currently watching Auburn highlights with the volume up, blissfully unaware he has been tagged fourteen times.
Meanwhile the sandwich-generation folks — the ones still packing care packages for a college kid in Auburn AND checking whether Grandma in Prattville needs a ride — are trying to schedule arrival times like air traffic control. “We’ll get there at 1:30.” “Make it 2:00, traffic.” “Can we do 12:45 so the baby still naps?” The baby will not nap. The baby is the CEO of this operation.
And don’t get me started on the store runs. Every grocery parking lot from Montgomery to Pike Road turns into a contact sport. You go in for butter and leave with three kinds of cranberry sauce you didn’t need, a disposable roasting pan that could shelter a small family, and the creeping fear that you forgot the one thing somebody put in ALL CAPS in the group text.
Then Thursday arrives. Somehow — despite the unread messages, the duplicate casseroles, the rolls that got assigned to three different people — the house fills up. Somebody’s laughing in the kitchen.
Somebody’s arguing about whether the turkey is “done” using a method that would not pass a science fair. A grandkid steals an olive off the relish tray like it’s a heist. The dog positions himself under the table with the faith of a saint.
You look around at the noise, the mismatched chairs dragged in from every room, the phone still buzzing with a late “ON MY WAY” from the relative who is never on their way, and you realize the group text wasn’t really about rolls.
It was about showing up.
So yes, I’m grumpy. I’ll keep complaining about Thanksgiving logistics, marshmallow diplomacy, and group texts that should come with a United Nations moderator.
But I’m grateful. Grateful for a table that still has too many opinions and not enough elbow room. Grateful for the people who argue about green beans because they care enough to come. Grateful that, for one loud afternoon in Alabama, we still gather — even if half the planning happened in a chat named with a turkey emoji.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to unmute Dad and confirm, for the fifteenth time, that yes — he is doing the turkey.