Nod your head if three or more of the following apply to you:

• College graduate
• Employed
• Half of a couple
• Mortgage holder
• Parent

Nod again if, despite acquiring all these trappings of adulthood, you still

There's no fiddlin' with tradition.

don’t quite feel grown up.

To me, if often seems like the true benchmarks of our lives occur unexpectedly. You add up the sum of the parts above, and it equals an adult. But the truth of the matter really crystallizes in specific, isolated moments.

Take parenthood, for instance. While I remember the births of both my children in vivid detail, neither was attended by the blend of awe, fear, humility and hope that parenthood was reported to inspire.

But certain mundane moments conferred precisely that ton-of-bricks mix. Like when we moved our first child from his high chair to a booster seat at the table. Wham. Seeing our then almost two-year-old child right there at the table with us hit me square in the gut. In that moment, I got it. We were a family.

I recalled that moment this week as I sized up that table, wondering about squeezing 11 people around it. Another Adult Moment is in the offing. This Thanksgiving, at age 40, for the first time in my life, I won’t be eating my mom’s turkey.

Forty years is a long time to stick with a tradition, even a holiday one. I have celebrated away from my mom’s table. In the early 90s, when I worked as a newspaper reporter in other states and never got the Friday after off, my family came to me. But Mom always toted the turkey along, too.

My brother got married in 1998, and five years later, I followed. Traditions often shift as family members do. But ours endured. Neither of our spouses had a family Thanksgiving tradition. Since my mom lives almost exactly halfway between us, her place is a sensible and equitable destination.

In 2002 my father’s death further cemented the status quo. We packed up first one kid, then two, then three – now five kids between my family and my brother’s – and continued to head over the river and through the woods so Mom wouldn’t be alone on Thanksgiving.

Not this year, though. My brother’s family decided to stay home first. Meanwhile, my snowbird in-laws are delaying this year’s departure. It’s the first chance we’ve had to spend a major holiday with them, so we decided to stay put, too. My mom – who’s indicated that, after 40 years in a row, she’s not too sorry to skip cooking – will head to her sister’s.

I’m excited about a new tradition. It’s probably overdue. Yet at the same time, it conjures up my adult imposter anxieties. There’s no way 11 people will fit around that table. We don’t have a turkey roasting pan. The under-15 set that will comprise half the guests will likely turn up their noses at the traditional menu, making us wonder why we’re bothering.

Yet sometime early Thanksgiving evening, maybe when we’re cleaning up, I expect another gut-level whammo. One down. Thirty-nine to go.

Image credit: Hale Centre Theatre