Thanksgiving

When I was little I liked to dip olives in apple juice. I think I remember the taste, and it wasn't that bad, but really, I think it was mostly about the olives. I like olives.

My grandfather was very overweight. My dad or maybe my aunt or maybe both of them would hassle him to try to get him to eat healthier, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to do specifically on the holiday. I know they tried to intervene at other times and had felt that they failed. Maybe they saw it as a chance to approach him together.

My aunt and my dad would usually argue. Sometimes it got bad enough that one of them would leave the dinner table. We kids eventually got our own table - me, my brother and my two cousins. I was the oldest of the bunch. I liked our card table. We didn't fight with each other at all. We even had a good time, joked around.

If my cousins weren't there, my brother and I would go hide in the spare room to avoid the issues of the adults. It was stocked with stuff, piles and piles of it, and none of it particularly exciting. Sure, there was a shoebox or two to rummage through, but they were invariably full of sewing equipment or old musty photos. But there was a TV in a far corner with a working VCR. We'd usually watch Miracle on 34th street or some other black and white classic.

If we weren't stowed back in the spare room, we'd be upstairs in one of the unused bedrooms. These had angled ceilings where the windows cut into the roof line. The entire second story had a sort of miniature quality to it. I remember noting that my grandparents slept in separate beds on the ground floor. Just like on TV.

My mom and dad split when I was five. The first I remember hearing of it was at a Thanksgiving. I was sitting on the stairs up to the second floor, and somebody, maybe my grandmother or my aunt, was asking me questions about it. I know I didn't really understand how significant the divorce would be, but I understood the concept. My dad was going to live somewhere else. "Yes," I said, when they asked me if I knew it wasn't my fault.

From that point on, we would have at least two Thanksgivings. The one I've already described was on my father's side and remained more or less the same through the years. I think that that Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving "A," was more remarkable because there were more people there, and because it was held at my grandmother's house and thus away from my home. But my mom hosted thanksgiving, too. As did my maternal grandmother, before she passed away when I was twelve. Those meals had a different vibe. There were just less people, so it couldn't be quite as festive. And when my mom hosted it was at our house. Sometimes she'd invite a friend in addition to the usual roster of me, my brother, my grandmother and my mother's sister. Sometimes, I think, our upstairs neighbors were involved. Two boys and their single mom. The older, Scott, was at least four or five years ahead of me. The younger, Nicholai, was one year behind. We were pretty tight.

I live now in a place hundreds and hundreds of miles from where any of this happened. None of the houses involved are still in the family. My grandfather has passed and my paternal grandmother now lives in upstate New York. My mom is in Florida. My father and stepmother live in Atlanta, GA. My wife and I have a son, and we've sort of stuck a flag down here in Kansas City. The flag says "home." Or maybe it's just a square of a bold color, like red.

We host Thanksgiving now. My father and stepmother and sister come, every year. My brother makes it when he can. We cook a wide range of vegetarian delights, which initially frightened my relatives, but which they have come to enjoy. They appreciate not being hit by such a hard food coma after the fact, and my wife is an excellent cook. We usually have at least two or three pies, a wide range of sides and my wife's incredible, made from scratch tofu turkey. It's nothing like a Tofurkey, if you've had one of those. Tofurkeys are terrible.

Whenever Thanksgiving approaches, I go through an emotional process. The steps are the same, but the order and timing vary from year to year. Step one is excitement. I more or less only see my dad, stepmom and sister once a year, at Thanksgiving, and so I look forward to it. I love my family.

The second step is less pleasant. At some point, I become painfully aware of how infrequently I see my family, and I start to do some pretty depressing math. I take my father's age, and I subtract it from 80, maybe 90 if I'm feeling generous. Then I multiply that by the number of days they usually spend out here, leading to an estimate of the number of days I will spend in my father's company in his lifetime. The number of days he'll spend playing with my son. That number isn't so large anymore.

Obviously, this is a horribly morbid thought. On its own, it would bear no merit. If I just sat in it and let it color the vibe of the visit, it would bring nothing but shadow to what could be a bright occasion. So last year, I took it upon myself to act. My brother was here, and we hosted a sort of intervention. We insisted that my dad and stepmom meet us for breakfast on the last day before they left, so that we could talk things out.

We had a conversation. We talked about wanting to be more tightly nit, about wanting to feel more like a real family. Basically, about wanting to make the effort to see each other more often. We conceded that nobody would be likely to move any time soon (there are powerful reasons), but we thought that maybe we could take a vacation once a year, together. Just that in itself would double the number I had been calculating in my head. My dad found the conversation difficult to deal with and actually left the table, but my stepmom was enthusiastic and touched. In the end, everyone agreed that this would be a great idea.

Unfortunately, it hasn't happened. The summer came and went. I made phone calls. I made proposals. But in the end, lacking a reciprocal amount of support on any side, I couldn't make it happen. Another year has passed.

So this year, I've already been through steps one and two, before anyone even arrives. I'm already trying to think about how to process my frustration, sadness and disappointment (maybe even resentment), at the distant way my family relates to one-another. I'm hoping, that by writing this, maybe I can move more quickly to step three, which is a sort of resignation and acceptance that allows me to finally enjoy the moment and the time that I have. When they go, I'm always glad they came, and I'm happy to have seen them.

I don't know where the wires got crossed, and when. I don't know how my family got to be the way it is, dispersed across the continent, limited in contact to a few days and phone calls. I've tried to unwind it, but I don't know how. I keep hoping that at some point somebody will be willing to make a sacrifice, that somebody will join us under this flag of ours, or that we'll decide to pick up the flag ourselves and re-plant it somewhere else. But no matter how I slice it up, there just doesn't seem to be an answer that makes sense. There's no solution to the puzzle of needs and requirements.

So we host the holiday and we bake the pies and we go bowling. You know, tradition. It's the best we can do.