Cherished Thanksgiving Traditions

Cousins Jack and Stellan get acquainted - Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving is that time of year when we introduce new family members. Back in 1971, Grandma arrived several hours early, just to be sure she didn’t miss my new boyfriend and future husband, a psychiatrist named Jerry Sashin. The two of them really hit it off, when he came by our home in Queens to whisk me away to his own family’s celebration in Roslyn. Wearing one of my most stylish dresses, I prayed that I would pass inspection among his many relatives.

The latter included Jerry’s Aunt Rose, a lady who taught canasta at her local YMHA in Washington Heights. Despite her skills, and the Sashin family ritual of playing cards at Thanksgiving, I failed to catch on. If only she were around to work with my five-year-old granddaughter, Lucy, who has such an affinity for card games that her big request for Hanukkah was a set of plastic card holders.

Jerry and I were married until 1990 when he died of cancer. Some six years later, my daughter Daphne, then a Barnard senior, and I were introduced to the extended family of my boyfriend Dennis Ditelberg, a lawyer and father of three grown children, and now my husband of nearly two decades. In the early years after his first wife, Fran, died of cancer, his sister-in-law Rhoda ran Thanksgiving at his home in Newton. Rhoda felt it wasn’t Thanksgiving unless she placed her trademark Hallmark paper turkeys at each end of the table. Approaching her on my best behavior, I felt grateful to her for insisting on fixing Daphne a plate. I appreciated that she understood how overwhelming it was for my daughter to meet the people who might one day be part of our big blended family.

Thanksgiving of 2005 was different because Daphne was working in Orlando, writing for The Orlando Sentinel, and as a new employee, she didn’t get enough time off to join us in the Northeast. We flew down to Florida in time to meet Etan Horowitz, the reporter who ultimately became my son-in-law, and the father of my grandson Jack and his sister Lucy. We met at a chichi restaurant suggested by the paper’s restaurant critic, where I considered Etan courageous for ordering the bison steak. I hoped that he would become a regular presence in our lives.

Thanksgiving of 2019 will reflect a special tradition of family togetherness. Daphne and Etan, now living in the San Francisco Bay Area, enjoy a warm relationship with my stepchildren and their spouses. I am reminded of the time Daphne, an only child, told me she would never marry an only child because she wanted her children to have cousins. Before getting to Connecticut, Jack and Lucy will visit their cousins on Etan’s side of the family in Delaware. But I don’t think Daphne anticipated that my marriage to Dennis would mean five more cousins, two of whom are almost the same ages as Jack and Lucy, and that they are super amped about the prospect of seeing each other.

And Dennis' niece has said she and her boyfriend, whom we look forward to meeting, will be joining us.