Thanksgiving. Day 445.

Hopefully your Thanksgiving was lovely and peaceful, and you were warmly surrounded by people and creatures who contribute to your contentment. Ours was lovely, and we were surrounded by people and creatures who contribute to our contentment, but not necessarily peaceful, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“The oven’s on fire,” I said calmly out the kitchen window to the crowd on the back deck. I held the fire extinguisher in my right hand just in case as I watched the flames not stop as they injected smoke flavor into our precious butternut squash and the green bean casserole.

“What did she say?” Auntie Sherry said.

“I think she said the oven is on fire,” Deaven answered.

It turned out to be the sweet potatoes and their dedication to feed the yellow flames with their sweet topping as it overflowed. Black smoke billowed out the top of the oven as it threatened to find the smoke detector to seal the fate of my embarrassment. Apparently there is such thing as too much butter.

I turned off the oven and stared through its cloudy window to make sure the flames went out, and flipped the breaker off until I had more time to clean out the black buttery syrup that rested lazily on the oven floor.

I still had to cook the potatoes! “Max, get the camp stove out of the shed,” I said.

You could hear the keys dangling in his hand as he walked into the dark to get to the shed. He grabbed the Coleman stove and a couple of green bottles of propane. We hooked it up then placed ten pounds of peeled potatoes in their water and salt bath on top to boil. We all cheered.

What glorious noise our crowd produced with sweet laughter, jokes, music, venting and celebrating recent accomplishments, going from subject to subject and interrupting each other like it’s been years. The hairy nucleus of our holiday group was six German shepherds, wrestling and barking, joining our conversation with their non-English words.

“He’s humping her!”

“Get off her, Gronk!”

The roosters even joined in with their crowing right through dawn, taking turns with their tired, raspy and most-loving declarations of FOMO.

The tender chaos continued through the later PMs and the food was hot and buttery and dreamy, but as always, the day’s light faded too fast and we were left with our puffy food babies and cloudy memories. I’m grateful that although I cooked tons of food, I didn’t burn myself and I didn’t cut myself. I’m mostly grateful, though, for our time together. They’re my people, and my soul’s fuel has been topped off.