“You’re Not Allowed To Bring Store-Bought Food—Only Homemade,” My Sister Demanded For Thanksgiving.

The Designated Turkey Mule

“You’re not allowed to bring store-bought food—only homemade,” My sister texted in the family group chat. “Those are the rules.”

So I stayed home. At 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving, while I was on my couch in sweatpants finishing a bowl of reheated chili, my phone lit up with a new text from my dad.

“Where’s the turkey? You were supposed to bring it.” My dad texted. I stared at the screen for a second, took a slow breath, and typed back. “I thought store-bought wasn’t allowed.”

Then I put my phone face down and listened to the quiet of my apartment instead of the chaos I knew was exploding on the other end. Sup Reddit, I’m Mark. I’m 36, a primary care physician in a midsize city in the Midwest.

I work in a large multi-clinic system attached to a hospital. I average about 60 hours a week, more when flu season hits and everyone in town suddenly remembers they have a doctor. I’m the oldest child, the responsible one, and also apparently the designated Thanksgiving turkey mule—at least according to my sister.

I’m telling this story now because my mom has already started hinting about fixing things for next year and coming back together as a family. I’m realizing I’m not interested in going back to the version of “together” where my time is disposable and my boundaries are optional.

Day-to-day, my life looks pretty normal for a doctor who isn’t doing TV dramas. My mornings start with coffee in a travel mug that lives in my car, 20 minutes of traffic, and a waiting room full of people who didn’t think it was urgent until they couldn’t breathe.

I split time between clinic visits, charting in our EMR under unforgiving fluorescent lights, and being the person nurses grab when someone’s blood pressure or blood sugar looks terrifying. My phone buzzes constantly with portal messages.

“Hey doc, is this rash normal?” “Can I drink on this medication?” “Forgot to mention this to you at my last appointment.”

The Burden of Being Reliable

Then there’s my unofficial second job: being my family’s personal healthcare hotline and life support system. My parents had me when they were pretty young; I’m 36, and my sister Jenna is 32. Our mom is a retired elementary school teacher, and our dad worked in maintenance for the school district until he had a minor heart attack five years ago and cut back to part-time.

We grew up in a small house where you could smell dinner from any room, where we ate at the table every night, and family time wasn’t optional. Jenna has always been the artistic one. She married her college boyfriend, Tyler, who works in sales for some regional beverage company, and now she’s a stay-at-home mom with two kids and an Instagram that looks like Pinterest threw up Thanksgiving decor all over her life.

According to my parents, she’s so creative and so busy with the kids and such a natural hostess. I’m the one who moved out, went to med school, took on six figures of debt, and now makes good money according to everyone who doesn’t see my loan statements. In family shorthand, “Mark can handle it” covers everything from driving my parents to procedures to paying for the entire grocery bill since I earn more.

That dynamic didn’t pop up overnight; it built over years in a thousand little scenes. There was the time five years ago when Dad had his heart attack. He ignored his chest discomfort for three hours because he didn’t want to bother anyone until Mom called me in a panic.

I was in clinic, still in my white coat. I closed my laptop, told the medical assistant to move my afternoon patients, and drove too fast to get them to the ER. I stood next to the bed translating cardiology jargon into plain English, arguing gently but firmly when a resident tried to discharge him too soon.

I slept in a plastic visitor chair that dug into my back, jumping every time a monitor beeped. When he stabilized, Mom hugged me and said, “What would we do without you?” Then she turned to Jenna and said, “You’re such a trooper, honey,” For keeping the kids calm through all of this.

Later, when they wanted to update their wills, guess who they asked to look over the paperwork? Not a lawyer, not an estate planner; me, because, “You’re a doctor, you know about this stuff.”

I told them I’m not a lawyer and suggested they get real legal advice. They nodded, ignored me, and then still forwarded me the drafts and asked, “Does this look okay?”

I ended up spending a Saturday afternoon reading legalese and making a bullet list of things they should ask an actual attorney. They thanked me by saying, “Jenna sat with us for hours going through our options; she really stepped up.”

Setting the Boundary

Holidays had their own pattern. Jenna loved to host in theory, but the execution usually landed on me.

One Thanksgiving three years ago, I was on call until 6:00 a.m. for hospital admissions. I grabbed two hours of sleep, then drove an hour to my parents’ house with three pies I’d paid for at a bakery because there was no universe where I was handmaking anything after that night. When I walked in exhausted and smelling faintly of hospital sanitizer, Mom hugged me and said, “Thank goodness you’re here. Can you run back out and grab drinks? Jenna forgot the sparkling cider, and there’s no ice either.”

I turned around and went right back out. At dinner, Mom kept telling everyone how Jenna put this whole thing together while Jenna gestured vaguely at the table and said, “It was a team effort.”

The team was, in practice, me, my credit card, and a grocery store rotisserie chicken emergency that I handled while she arranged decorative gourds. Money had a way of becoming my responsibility too. When Jenna and Tyler wanted to buy their house, my parents called me.

“We’re thinking about helping them with the down payment,” Dad said, his voice carefully casual. “You know how hard it is for young families these days.”

At that point, I was 32, living in a small apartment with hand-me-down furniture, working 60-plus hours a week, and sending a significant part of my paycheck into the black hole of med school debt. But in their minds, Jenna and Tyler were the “young family” and I was the financially secure bachelor with endless resources.

They didn’t actually ask me for money that time; they just asked me to look over their numbers and make sure it makes sense. I pointed out their retirement savings were thin and suggested they help a little, but not so much that it endangered their own stability. Mom frowned and said, “It’s different for you, Mark. You don’t have a family to support.” Translation: your future theoretical children don’t count, hers do.

Fast forward to last fall. Everyone’s Halloween decorations were barely down when the “Lopez Family Thanksgiving 2023” group chat lit up. Yes, my parents named it; yes, they used the turkey emoji.

“Hi my loves, let’s plan Thanksgiving early this year so it’s not all on me. I’m too old to cook everything, haha.” Mom started it. Jenna jumped in within minutes. “I was thinking we do it at Mom and Dad’s again so the kids can stay in their routine. I’ll handle decor and dessert. We should divide up the food so it’s fair.”