For the first time in my life, I will not celebrate the holiday of the turkey with a small horde of relatives. This year, it will be just four of us. And I don’t quite know what to do about it.

I’m not entirely sad about having an abbreviated Thanksgiving, because traditions can get boring, and since it’s me doing all the heavy lifting in the kitchen, they are a lot of work. We have already decided that we’re going to be Jewish on Christmas Day this year and order Chinese Food. Maybe Christmas Eve will be Indian Food, but that food genre is still up in the air. Ditching the Italian 13 fish tradition would be hugely controversial, and I am not ready for that debate.

Our abbreviated Thanksgiving will still involve a turkey, just a smaller one. The bird is currently sitting in a bath of salt in the fridge, doing its brining magic. There will be stuffing and mashed potatoes, because every day is a good day for carbs. Steve’s already jarred up his great-grandmother’s recipe for cranberry sauce and roasted pumpkin for the pies.

So, in many ways, our Thanksgiving will still be very Thanksgiving-y. We’re cooking, unlike many of my friends. Even my mother is getting turkey take-out.

But our holiday will be lower key this year. We won’t put on nice clothes and put the nice towels in the bathroom. I’m not worried about having enough food and making sure the timing is correct. We’ll probably watch a lot of tv — the parade in the morning, because that Ian’s favorite and then whatever Avenger movies are on, just not Guardians of the Galaxy, because we’ve watched that one too many times.

And we will hopefully take the time, sometime before dinner, to stop and think on this weirdest of weird Thanksgivings how grateful we are to be alive and well. That we have survived this far with all of our marbles intact and our love for each other still strong, despite being in close quarters and having some terribly annoying habits, like drinking water too loudly. That our oldies are still with us to enjoy a few more holidays in the future, where they will still manage to make us feel guilty about random shit, even though we are now in our fifties. That we can walk outside the house every morning for a daily walk and smell the fresh air and know that the day is full of possibilities.

Yes, we’ve got it good.

Eat well, my friends. Relax and love your cave-bear family members. I’ll be back on Friday.