So much for Thanksgiving traditions.
What had been well-planned family gatherings for 30 or 40, with extra tables and folding chairs spilling into the living room, are now simple dinners for two or three — or in too many cases, “just me.”
As Ezequiel Jaime of San Jose puts it: “Who wants to be responsible for having mom die?”
Surging coronavirus cases across the Bay Area and the country have upended plans and broken hearts and left us yearning for Nana’s homemade sausage stuffing and cringey uncle jokes.
My own family Thanksgiving fell apart when my 21-year-old son, away at college, tested positive for COVID-19. Although he would be released from quarantine by Tuesday, word raced through the family tree and my Thanksgiving quickly went from 17 to 4.
I get it. I do. My own mom is 89. Don’t risk it.
But it hurts!
After eight months of pandemic pandemonium — lost jobs, lost loved ones, lost simple, joyful routines of life — Californians who may have been in denial (like I was!) are coming to terms with the inevitable: We’re losing Thanksgiving, too.
If anyone is still uncertain, check out the latest CDC guidelines: postpone travel, they say, and stay home. AAA predicts airline travel will plummet to half of last year — the largest single-year decline on record.
Adriana Pinto and her husband, Jairo Cardozo, told their two children and their partners, all in their 20s, not to come home from Chico and Stanford University next week. For the Fremont couple, that means no turkey this year.
“It’s just too big an animal for two people,” Cardozo, 53, said.
In past years, they’ve traveled to Seattle to be with family, and for Christmas, too. But ever since Pinto’s father in Colombia was hospitalized with the virus, and thankfully recovered, they’ve been extra cautious.
“We canceled everything,” she said. “It’s the responsible thing to stay home.”
Jennie Le’s Thanksgiving can be summed up inside the box she was returning to Costco in Santa Clara last week — a Circulon Turkey Roasting Pan. She bought that when she was planning on carving a big bird for 32 relatives. This year, she will serve just six.
“I just really want this COVID to stop,” she said.
Don’t we all! But if you’re looking for an excuse to take a break from social-distancing, you won’t find one from Dr. Cecil Bradley, the head of psychiatry at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Gatos.
“Americans aren’t used to being self-disciplined enough,” Bradley said. “We need to be like the British were during The Blitz in World War II and do what was necessary. … Put gatherings off until next year.”
A few weeks ago, there had been a glimmer of hope for a bit of normalcy. Although the number of coronavirus cases was surging across the Midwest, Bay Area coronavirus cases were trending downward. Thanksgiving plans were penciled in, menus planned, who-brings-what was divvied up.
But just when we all need a big group hug more than ever, the virus is driving us even farther apart. With more than 1,000 new cases a day and hospitalizations jumping 37% last week alone, most of the Bay Area has slipped into the state’s dreaded purple tier of restrictions — the most severe.
Maybe it helps to know that Santa Clara County Health Officer Sara Cody is relegating her own 80-something mother to the backyard with a blanket. Her comment about it went viral.
The creeping realization that big Thanksgiving gatherings should be canceled is finally hitting home.
“It’s a combination of scary and sad and a little bit lonely,” said Kaye Luck, of San Jose.
Her family of four always invites a few friends for the holiday and she’s pretty sure one of them will have Thanksgiving alone. To brighten the day, she’s planning a drive-by favorite-dish exchange with friends she hopes will bring their “sausage-sauerkraut thing” (the one her dog devoured one year) and the celebrated red beet “crime-scene salad.”
“I’m going to make my apple-cranberry galette,” she said, “but maybe I’ll split it into pieces. Sending an entire galette home with one person is unfair — especially with all the gyms closed.”
Dr. Paul Silka, the head of the Emergency Department at Regional Medical Center in San Jose, will be working Thanksgiving Day. He’s treated hundreds of patients who have thankfully survived the deadly virus. Many feel they leave the hospital with an “immunity passport,” he said.
“There’s not great science on it,” Silka said, “but there’s a sense that once you’ve had it, there’s some degree of invincibility.”
I’m counting on that immunity passport, because my mother now will be spending Thanksgiving with my brother whose wife and daughter recovered from COVID over the summer. A new study out last week suggests most people carry immunity cells to protect them from the virus more than six months after recovery.
There are plenty of people who are still clinging to the false notion that blood relatives are somehow automatically in their “bubble.”
Not necessarily. CDC guidelines say it’s best to limit Thanksgiving to those within your own household,
For an interactive map and more details about the methodology, please visit covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu
So what is the chance that at least one person attending your Thanksgiving dinner party has COVID? In the Bay Area, for a gathering of 25 people, the risk ranges from 13 percent in Alameda County to 17 percent in Santa Clara County, according to an intriguing interactive map and study by the Georgia Institute of Technology, along with researchers at Stanford University.
For 15 people? The risk is closer to 10 percent. So you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky?
Of course, there are plenty of you out there who instead of melancholy feel secretly relieved to avoid that dreaded family dynamic that always pollutes our Norman Rockwell image of the holiday. If you thought talking politics at the Thanksgiving table was fraught last year, imagine it now with President Donald Trump refusing to concede.
But some folks don’t have the luxury of an option for a holiday celebration.
Jaime, 60, lost both his bartending jobs during the pandemic and stopped driving for Lyft because he lives with his 87-year-old mother and didn’t want to risk spreading the virus. He picked up a part-time job at an Amazon warehouse.
“I have to take whatever hours I can, so I’ll have to work Thursday — noon to 9,” he said. He normally celebrates with about 16 relatives, but this year, there will be nothing. “My mom’s going to be by herself,” he said. “All the immediate relatives canceled.”
Sometimes, though, the people who have endured the worst find surprising grace.
Steven Nelsen’s brother and close family friend both are recovering from horrendous burns they suffered during the SCU fire behind Mount Hamilton in August. James Schultz, 32, who is still hospitalized, and his brother Tom Shelton, 22, are awaiting more surgeries.
For a family that lost a brother the day after Christmas 17 years ago, the holidays usually carry a solemn tone.
“I can tell you, this year is not really that,” Nelsen said. “More than anything else, we’re grateful. Even though James won’t sit with us at the table, he’s with us in spirit and my mom will visit him. We’re thankful they’re still alive.”
How can we feel sorry for ourselves after hearing that? Especially me?
I do have so much to be thankful for. I’m grateful my son, Daniel, only had mild coronavirus symptoms and will be coming home. I’m grateful my brother offered to make his first turkey this year to celebrate with our mom.
I’m grateful we’re all, now, healthy.
We won’t have the 17 people around the table we had hoped for. But my husband, Chris, will still make his famous brandied cranberry sauce and fresh green bean casserole from scratch, and my daughter, Claire, promises to make my late father’s favorite clam dip.
This year, for the first time, it will be just the four of us. And that’s a blessing, too.
