tsSara+J.

“We’re here!” our parents say every year after four hours full of “Are we there yet?” Though the car ride was agonizing, every Thanksgiving my family managed to make our way up to my aunt and uncle's apartment in Brooklyn, New York. My grandparents and cousins met us there, too.

__The apartment was a chunk of Italy brought to America__. Every detail in the room from the furniture to the food, the smell to the silverware was Italian. But “little Italy” as I call it, was up the very steep, dangerous and incredibly fun staircase.

The normal routine for Thanksgiving was first to greet everyone. This was hard for me because I had a lot of aunts and uncles there and they all kind of looked alike. So, I would just say, “Hi, how are you?” and hope someone would say their name before I had to. After the greetings, certain aunts and uncles would give me presents. I normally got porcelain dolls since I have a collection or beach toys. My grandma would also bring extra supplies of the most random things because she had extra.

Around 4 o’clock, we would eat dinner. We sat at __a table as long as the Mississippi River__. At least it felt that way. There were multiple courses of food, mostly that I don’t really like. I ate turkey, mashed potatoes, a vegetable, and whatever food I was brave enough to try that year.

All of the kids (my brother, my three cousins, and I) always finished first. All of the adults took forever to eat because they were talking and stuffing theirselves silly. So, the five kids would always play on the staircase. It was carpeted so no one thought anyone could get hurt. Too bad they didn’t think about the linoleum at the bottom.

The stairs were a lot of fun, but they mainly served as racetracks. Sometimes we would see who could go down on their behind the fastest. Sometimes we did stomachs. One year we had received bouncy balls and tried to see whose ball would get to the bottom first (a painting hanging on the wall above the staircase broke that year). There might have been a few bruises but not as bad as this year. We were doing a relay race on our stomachs. A person would start on the top and go down and touch the person at the bottom’s hand. That person would have to run up the stairs and then go down and touch the next person. Well, my brother was going down while my cousin was running up. They collided, and my cousin’s mouth hit the corner of the staircase so he busted his lip open. He was better off than my brother though, who tumbled down the steps and cracked his skull. There was blood all over the floor and we had to call an ambulance. He ended up being okay but oh, what __a fine mess__ it was.