“Oh, and Emily’s going to be early!” she called back from the stairs.

“Shit,” I mumbled, looking at the state of myself. Getting together a dozen dishes and looking cute all in the span of, like, six hours is the hardest thing I have ever pulled off.

But I think I did pull it off—Emily was early and when I opened the door, she took in my nice pants and knit sweater and smiled, color blooming on her cheeks. We went through all the extremely awkward introductions that were made a lot less awkward by Emily being her unbelievably charismatic self and making everyone comfortable. Which of course was immediately undercut by Aaron jumping in, totally unprompted, with:

“Don’t worry, no intense traditions or weird fetishization of colonizers in this house,” he said lightly. “And no football. This is strictly a food holiday for us, especially with this one around.”

He gave me an affectionate push on the shoulder—something he has literally never done in his life—and smiled, completely oblivious to the way that Emily had gone still, her eyes widening. Like she was caught out—like she had just been thinking about the real, dirty history of this holiday and worrying how this white family might celebrate it. After a second, Aaron caught on to her expression and froze too. YEP, guess she had been thinking that and Aaron somehow decided it would be a good idea to respond to her thoughts five seconds after she stepped through the door.

“I just mean,” he started, stumbling, “that’s something I think a lot about. Don’t know if you do too.”

I winced at the awkward cover, but Emily relaxed.

“Oh yeah, totally,” she said, nodding and pushing her cropped hair behind her ear in a nervous tic I’ve grown to love. “I mean, it’s hard to find any American holiday that doesn’t have some truly problematic roots, but at least this one has great food.”

“Speaking of!” I jumped in, taking Emily’s hand. “Let me show you what I’ve been cooking up.”

I pulled her into the kitchen and we seemed to be over the first—and I had hoped, only—Atypical slipup. Emily helped me finish out the dishes (by which I mean, she put marshmallows on top of the yams, the only assignment I’ll cede control over when it comes to Thanksgiving) while my mom asked about her poetry. And it was different than when she interrogates me about my work or my future—my mom seemed genuinely interested and supportive of a less traditional career. Jealousy and happiness fought it out inside of me the entire time I was plating things, but eventually gratitude that my mom was making an effort won out. A Thanksgiving miracle.

Another miracle? The fact that Emily didn’t catch on to the weirdness of my family when MY DAD LEVITATED THE FREAKIN’ PEPPER MILL ACROSS THE TABLE.