It’s nice living back home for the holidays. Today is Thanksgiving, and this morning I could hear my parents up and about before I got out of bed. Having not quite figured out the power of technology, Dad was yelling into the phone as if it were a tin can with a string attached to the bottom. Mom was running up and down the hallway. Ten minutes after my alarm had gone off, she knocked on my door–time to get up. If it’d been any other day, I would have headed straight for the kitchen. Instead I took a shower and put on some clean clothes, intentionally starving myself in preparation for The Big Meal.

When I was a kid we used to pile in the car and spend Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa’s. The adults would sit at one table, the kids would sit at another, and I can still taste the deviled eggs. Grandpa always made oyster dressing, Grandma made a mean pumpkin pie, and at least once it was all served up on paper plates with plastic forks. It made for easy cleanup, of course, but it was anything but fancy. If only I’d come out sooner, I could have insisted on china and proper flatware.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s a small regret.

I do think there’s something magical about the holidays, and I don’t just mean the deals on Black Friday. I think there’s literally something in the air. Even if there’s family drama, families get together and people try. Sometimes they fail miserably, of course, but at the very least, they eat together. More often than not, everyone is on their best behavior, the food is delicious, and no one’s in a hurry to leave. This is the magic I’m talking about–it’s like time slows down. Cars linger in the driveway, eating gets stretched out for hours, fathers fall asleep on couches.

This year my family opted for eating out, which–if you think about it–is a convenient way to celebrate the pilgrims without having having to clean the oven. Anyway, we piled as many people as we could into my car, Tom Collins, and pulled into the parking lot of Furr’s Fresh Buffet in Fort Smith at 2:23 PM. Y’all, there were so many people there was a line out the double doors. It took fifteen minutes just to make it inside, and then the lady behind the cash register said, “I’m going to need you to stand against the wall while you wait.” It was like she was herding cattle. I could have sworn I was at the state fair. The only thing missing was a sign that said, “Must be this tall to ride” in front of the salad bar.

It took a while, but our party of eight eventually got seated together. One by one we took to the crowded buffet lines, filling our plates with turkey, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes, all warmed by high-powered heat lamps. Back at the table, my Aunt Tudie had a plate full of stuffing. My dad (her brother) said, “Why did you put ranch dressing on that?”

“Well shit,” she said, “I thought it was gravy.”

For over an hour we ate and visited, ate and visited. Our drink waiter–a guy–kept calling the women at our table “honey,” so I made the assumption that he was gay. Not really something you hear many straight men say in the south. (Right, sugar?) Anyway, I did a lot of people watching. Just in the time we were at the restaurant, there must have been hundreds of customers come and go. It was like every person in the tri-state area had come out for the mediocre pumpkin pie and endless refills of soft-serve ice cream. I kept thinking, Was NO ONE here willing to cook?

My Aunt Carla (my dad’s other sister) said, “I just want to know what I have to do to get on your blog.”

“Just take a selfie with me,” I said. “It’s really that simple.”

After The Big Meal, everyone else went their separate ways, and Mom, Dad, Aunt Tudie, and I came back to our house for coffee and pie. Y’all, this was the first dessert I’ve had in three weeks–so good. My insulin didn’t know what to do. Anyway, for a couple hours, Dad and Aunt Tudie talked, Mom surfed the internet, and I read a book in the oversized chair I’m about to pass out in now. (It’s four in the morning.) Then my aunt went home, and Mom and Dad and I binge-watched recorded episodes of Will and Grace for over two hours. Considering we’re all pretty much retired, this is something we could technically have done any day of the year. Still, since we did it on Thanksgiving, it felt special.

Again, this is the magic I’m talking about, the way we slow down and spend time with each other. All my grandparents are gone now, and it’s funny–sometimes I don’t remember what their voices sounded like. But I remember Grandpa called everyone “children,” and Grandma kept her teeth on the bathroom counter just as much as she kept them in her mouth. Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me what kind of plates we ate on back then. Twenty years from now I won’t care whether we ate at home or went to a buffet this afternoon. I didn’t care this afternoon–we were together. What’s important is not where you are, but whom you are there with. This is what makes some days more special than others, the thing that makes time slow down, the thing that makes the taste of deviled eggs stay with you.