Belated Thanksgivings

After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries A New Recipe For Hamburger Hot Dish by Leo Dangel

"How did you like it?" she asked.
"It's all right," he said.
"This is the third time I cooked it this way. Why can't you ever say if you like something?"
"Well if I didn't like it, I wouldn't eat it," he said.
"You never can say anything I cook tastes good."
"I don't know why all the time you think I have to say it's good. I eat it, don't I?"
"I don't think you have to say all the time it's good, but once in awhile you could say you like it."
"It's all right," he said.

Well, I realized I needed to count my many blessings after venting to Amy and James about my Thanksgiving frustrations with an ever-imperfect family. After all, in addition to the usual family holiday madness, we DO have some clinical insanity to deal with, and as I told James, it was nearly heartbreaking to watch Jon so heavily medicated that it was all he could do to munch slowly on his dinner, let alone hold any kind of conversation. Then there was Grandma, who not having attended church herself since she was put in rehab for overusing anti-depressants, first offended my practically atheist uncle by asking him to pray and then passed over her daughter, my mom, to the only other man, my father whom she despises, to make sure that the representative patriarch was praying for the sins of our heathen family, which could only chuckle nervously at the awkwardness. Still reeling from the variety of feelings that invoked, I reached over for a spoonful of Katherine's sweet potato pudding, deciding that, on Thanksgiving and after losing 26 pounds, it would probably be okay to cheat a little. My dad tut-tutted me, at which point I barked perhaps a bit overreactively, worried (irrationally) that my lifelong rebellion against my parents' constant pressure about my weight would revisit and somehow send me on a reversal landslide back to my original weight if he went any further. In the end, though, I've decided that with a few exceptions, Thanksgiving never is truly Thanksgiving in ANY family without a little family dysfunction, let alone an officially dysfunctional one like ours. And as I was just writing the other day, I AM proud of us all for managing to figure out how to cope with it better than we used to...

But Bob Dylan saved the day for me. After Katherine gathered her ex-husband and chicks to go to the beach house, and once my dad and Matt convinced Jon it was time for him to go back to his new home so they could hightail it home to Murrieta, my mom and I settled in on the couch in my uncle's empty house to watch No Direction Home, the most recent Dylan documentary. I had been trying to convince my mom since the day before to trek out to Irvine to see the new film inspired by Dylan's music and life, I'm Not There, so I figured it would help her see how interesting another movie about his life would be. When Joan Baez came on, her interest was officially piqued and we got out the paper to find the showtime. I couldn't help chuckling about my mom and her former pretentions to be a hippie when the film made Joan's ardent self-belief look a little silly, but I was mostly proud of us for being so cool as to give the holiday to Grand Master Dylan.

And I am grateful for more than Dylan this year. Even the holiday was an improvement on last year's ridiculous, maudlin display when I rushed through an airport with tears streaming down my face only to learn I'd missed a flight I had lied to everyone to try to catch to see someone who really didn't want to see me, which was followed by an awkwardly silent dinner with Mom as I choked back tears she didn't want to hear about and my brothers and Dad boycotted the meal altogether upstairs, locked in their rooms.

I am grateful for a job that I love, where I work with kids who GET me and need me and laugh with me. I am grateful that it also happens to be the first job that is paying enough for me to live reasonably comfortable, even despite all of the money that is funneled into paying off last year's foolhardy debts and a new car, Sophie, who I also love and appreciate dearly. I am grateful for a year of more great musical feasts thanks to monthly music subscriptions and even finally a renewed concert schedule that went on hiatus for far too long.

Most of all, though, of course, I am grateful for loved ones that make life worth living with their conversation, laughter, shared experiences, and patience.

The Orange by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.