Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Thanksgivings and Misgivings
We are upon the time of year that I look forward to most - when friends and family set aside their differences for a day (or not) and sit down together for an all-out gutbuster and the occasional knock down drag out family fight. My family never fights. We don't know how. We were all raised to suck it up when we were upset and turn all that anger into passive-aggressive bullshit. It makes for mellower Thanksgivings and family gatherings in general. Friends would return from family get togethers and tell the most outrageous stories about drunk grandparents hurling insults at their beloved offspring, hairpulling twin aunts who couldn't be nice for one day, and bratty cousins who were baked all day. So foreign to me!
Some of my favorite Thanksgiving memories:
* As a child we met in the basement of Carrie Nation's home in Medicine Lodge, Kansas because we wouldn't fit in any of our houses. I barely remember toddling around and being given fruit from the amaretto sours of the grown ups.
* The time we got my dementia-touched grandma drunk and played Monopoly all day. We were in Conway in the house I grew up in and Grandma had moved in with us because she and Granddad were beating each other after 50 years of marriage. I had never liked that woman (not a fun, cookie baker of a grandma) and that day I kinda softened to her since she was tipsy and not so mean.
* Sometime around 1992 I went to California with Harley's daddy for a wedding. We drove to Ensenada, Mexico and spent Thanksgiving with friends on the beach in their rented house. It was very strange for me since I was young, clueless, surrounded by older people who were hard partiers, and we were all nestled into this amazing house on the beach while stray dogs starved at our doorsteps and the locals were scraping to get by. Definitely a punctuation point on being thankful.
* The Thanksgiving after I got divorced. I hated my family and they hated me (all passively, of course). Boyfriend and I had Thanksgiving dinner and festing at Brenda and Big Harley's house on 6th Street. Jenna's then-boyfriend Gary knocked a glass of red wine over on Bren's granny's tablecloth, so I covered for him and blamed it on the stray cat they had taken in. It worked, Jenna and Gary got married, and we confessed a couple of years ago that it wasn't the cat.
* Five years ago when Sean and I had just started publicly dating and he and his mom came and joined us. He was not a big fan of Thanksgiving until that point, when he realized that you really can just get together with the people you want to be with and not be forced to hang out with folks who make you unhappy.
* Three years ago when Berger was with us for Thanksgiving. "Berger" was Elvis Berger, a World World II vet and retired math teacher from Lawrence who had alienated his family by being an unpleasant old cuss, so I took care of him. He and Mark talked military, Lisa pulled the Jew card on him, and he smiled and ate pie all day long. He died the next summer and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Was that the same year that Shay drove the 4 wheeler into a fence and tried to decapitate himself?
* Two years ago when we over-served Shay and convinced him that it was hot and he needed to take his clothes off. We then posed him with my shearling Santa hat and The Joy of Cooking so that all you can read is "Joy" in this obviously drunk, mostly naked guy's arms who looks like he had an all night ski party (sniff sniff) with Santa's elves.
* Tomorrow. I am sure that by this time Friday something really exciting and fabulous will have happened. Gypsy will call from Dallas, Lauren will call from Southern California. Uncle John's quiet demeanor and practical jokes will be sorely missed. First-timers will join us for the holiday - which starts at noon today - and some folks will make their last appearance here as they move on down the road to different callings. Others will continue a tradition that began many years ago for my family in the basement of a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. How far we have come from our roots.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone. Be well.
posted by Rosie @ 11/22/2006 07:46:00 AM

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