Naked Turkey Doors

“I’m doing the Thanksgiving shopping today,” I said stuffing a grocery list in my purse.

“You’ve got weeks to do that,” Mr. Wonderful said looking up from the morning newspaper.

“Thanksgiving is this Thursday.”

“This Thursday?”

“We’ll have 15 people for dinner.”

“Fifteen people?”

“You need to rehang the doors.”

“Rehang the doors?”

“Why are you repeating everything I say?”

“Every—”

“Don’t answer that!”

Thanksgiving sort of snuck up on me this year, which is crazy because everyone knows Thanksgiving is the sixth Thursday of November. “Everyone” that is, except Mr. Wonderful. But then dates aren’t his forte. He’d forget his own birthday if it weren’t written on his driver’s license. Basically when it comes to dates, my intelligent brunet spouse becomes a total blond bubblehead. In The House whenever a date needed remembering, it was like Gilligan’s Island: my normally smart, Mary Ann Summers man morphed into the bimbo Ginger Grant goofball. For him, remembering dates was like using one’s palms to transport ocean water across the beach. It just didn’t work.

The fact that he never knew when Thanksgiving was and had let it slip up on him—and me—again this year also explained why he hadn’t painted the doors or rehung them.

Ahh, the doors! Earlier in November I was adamant about removing one door from its hinges and stripping it of paint. The paint remover must have corroded Mr. Wonderful’s brain because soon he removed every other door in The House and stripped each one of seven coats of paint. Then just as suddenly, he stopped with the doors, I stopped with the doors and Jackson stopped too. To be fair, the cat only stripped paint with his claws, which was a slow but effective process in… driving me crazy. Although this time even Jackson was too lazy to scratch the doors free of paint.

“Thanksgiving’s this Thursday?” Mr. Wonderful said leaping from his chair “Before I rehang the doors I have to paint them!”

“The paint won’t dry in time,” I said grabbing my cloth shopping bags. “We’ll just have unpainted doors for Thanksgiving.” 

“But you like Thanksgiving.”

“I love Thanksgiving.” 

“You always want things perfect for Thanksgiving.”

“This year there isn’t time,” I said grabbing my car keys. “Besides with all the Thanksgiving food and festivities, no one will notice our unpainted brown doors.”

“Brown” doesn’t actually describe the color of the stripped doors since they were more of a mottled brown with white splotches, sort of like the paint drips of a Jackson Pollack painting—not the painting itself but the drop cloth under the painting. You know, the thing you throw away. If my doors had looked like Jackson Pollack paintings, I would have sold them to a New York City gallery ASAP! 

With time ticking and my favorite holiday of the year fast approaching—I love Thanksgiving!—Mr. Wonderful knew I was right. When you work Monday through Wednesday of Thanksgiving Week, you can’t paint six doors and rehang them straight. Instead I went food shopping every day and Mr. Wonderful rehung each door well.

I love Thanksgiving! The day before T-Day I made the Leek Soup starter and for dessert Creme Brulé. The day of I dressed the turkey so our guests would arrive with the smell of cooked turkey wafting through The House, which was perfect since the smell of the cooked bird is one of the reasons I love Thanksgiving! 

“What happened there?” my friend said pausing in the hallway and pointing to the brown splotches on our doors.

“Doesn’t the bird smell delicious?” I said trying to redirect her attention to the star of the day. 

“Auntie, why are your doors looking like that?” my friend’s nine-year-old said pointing to the offending doors.

“Do you want some pumpkin pie after dinner?” I said bending down to her level.

“I’d fire your handyman if I were you,” an older guest said staring at the doors. “They’re not even painted!”  

“Please sit down! Dinner’s ready,” I said pulling our guests from the door-dominated hallway to the dinner table.

But no one came for they were mesmerized by who would choose to put those doors in their house? And boom! I hated Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday was being robbed of its power because of some naked doors. Argh!

Finally steering everyone to the table like a cat herder, we raised our glasses in the air. I gave a Thanksgiving Toast to which our littlest six year-old guest added a special request: that we get our doors painted soon.

Hmmm. Maybe we will, Virginia, for Christmas.