The new world's great tradition: novelty | Charles Petersen

no genealogy, or family. It marks time, happy that we are here in this country ruthlessly disturbed

My grandmother was a genealogist and like most American genealogists, who had one goal: to prove that his family was not as old as the country itself - the target average of Girls of the American Revolution - but even older, who had a relationship with the long tradition of America, Thanksgiving, and found the same Mayflower. At the time I was a kid, I had done. For my tenth birthday, I gave a genealogy done by hand, as big as my bed, tracing the roots back to Plymouth Rock and beyond.

It was the Bracken family. At the top of the genealogy was the Petersen, a tribute to my grandmother to her son in law. He was a scrubby little boy from a tree next to the large leaves, then a few generations of Norwegian farmers who had come through many other immigrants in the 19th century.

Thanksgiving
• Our meetings are not loud crackling wasps former rebels and recent immigrants imaginable. The Norwegians are, if anything, quieter than your average Anglo-Saxons. And when I was nine months, my parents joined in another great American tradition and headed west, taking their lives in Minnesota and moving to Idaho, where I grew up and where they still live today ' hui.
No two Thanksgiving was always the same. One year, was a small family affair, and the next, a big family reunion far from their roots to go home, and the next, a band of orphans Thanksgiving, single and divorced, young and old, my mother had invited her to join us. Some years, we would Turkey, others have lamb or beef, or a monster that my mother had read in a cookbook. The letter of credit only red Jell-O with marshmallows on top - a classic of my childhood when I was too picky to eat anything - and the recipe for my grandmother to the mashed Norway, which remained with us, even after my parents divorced and the family tree split in two.

Now, in those years when I do go back to Idaho, I dine with my mother and save space for the cake to my father. Or I'm in New York and make a fool trying to learn to carve the turkey to seek ways to make videos on YouTube.