“Have no idea how to decorate your Thanksgiving table? Problem solved…” — @IvankaHQ, 11/16/17
The kids gather around the Thanksgiving Clam to pick out their presents, which are tasteful mother-of-pearl accessories from my eponymous jewelry line. We know presents aren’t traditionally part of Thanksgiving, but blending and creating traditions is nothing new in our syncretic capitalist-Jewish modern family.
Instead of saying grace, we pass around and read selections from Moby-Dick curated by my cultural attaché, a promising, blonde recently graduated English major. Daddy gets the first line before he gets bored.
Team Ivanka recirculates our profile of the Woman Who Works from whom we bought the clam, a hardy Maine fisherwoman who said she hates health insurance and doesn’t want any more of it.
We take a brisk walk on Thanksgiving morning in New Jersey’s protected Kushner forest lands and gather more twigs, gourds, and earthy flair for the Thanksgiving Clam, a centerpiece that bridges land and sea, high and low culture, middle and coastal America, the forgotten man and the embittered whaler.
Jared and I glance moodily at the Thanksgiving Clam, which is, in a way, a metaphor for our partnership: glossy, white, imperturbable. I know what he’s thinking: how to get a dozen more giant clams to send to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. I chuckle mildly. It’s important to let your husband have his little bromances.
After three of my maids have cleaned, scored, and diced the Thanksgiving Clam, I quickly whip up a seasonally appropriate Thanksgiving Clam chowder, a back-pocket recipe perfect for busy moms.
My sweet daughter perches inside the Thanksgiving Clam and sings a Ming Dynasty-era sea shanty in historically accurate imperial Mandarin, a video of which we will release to Chinese messaging apps and Xinhua news agency around the time an investigation into my Chinese headband factory is published next month.