We Do This Every Year

A long musing about Thanksgiving in my family.

We all learned long ago that we can't pick our family. When that one intrepid sperm breached the egg and the cosmic tumblers all fell into place, we were given little choice in the matter. Like each person, each family has a personality. Mine is beautifully rooted in Northeast Missouri. The family business in masonry construction, the family game is poker (and not that Texas Hold'em bullshit). If we manage to break into the nebulous middle class, it is decidedly the lower end. Both of my grandparents survive, and after a life of hard work they are mostly retired and spend the greatest amount of their time going to casinos and playing the slots. They've earned it. Each of their 6 children (4 girls, including my mother, and 2 boys) remain. Amongst the numerous grandchildren, I remain the only one with a college degree - it's not pride, it's merely statement of fact. Some never had a chance, others might have butt got pregnant instead. In fact, that seems to be my generation's greatest skill: my cousins have produced 11 great-grandchildren and a 12th is well on the way. Sadly, being able to afford and care for these little people rarely enters into the equation. But as we've said, they didn't choose this, and their parents lack of common sense does nothing to diminish our love.

In my family, there is no holiday like Thanksgiving. It alone is untouchable, immutable, and purely sacrosanct. Christmas is celebrated but mostly as a "nuclear family" event. Only on Thanksgiving does everyone comes together, united in love of food and mere toleration of each other.

In my post 21 years, the night before Thanksgiving has come to be associated with heading to the bars and experiencing the inevitable high school reunion. But this isn't what I think of when Thanksgiving eve comes around. Instead, my brain goes back to Junior High, to the days when the television gave up its attempt to draw viewers to its original programming on Thanksgiving Wednesday, and instead gave us filler. The filler I remember most was a show on NBC that claimed to "reveal the biggest secrets in magic." More than show us how its done, they wanted to show us how to do it ourselves. Now, this was in the period of my life that I enjoyed mimicing sports activity ... inside the house. My parents have a fairly small house, with a fairly small living room. Being all about sports but totally against athletic ability, I decided the smartest thing to do was dive for balls on the living room floor, or dribble mini basketballs and go for lay ups on the door header. I mention this only to prove that I wasn't the most attentive television watcher out there.

The mind of the Maddog was then, and is to this day, impressionable. But also a poor visual learner. Oh, and lazy. I was fascinated by the possibility of learning tricks, but disappointed that many of them required props that I was too lazy to assemble - plastic cups, for instance. I also knew that my easily distracted brain could never master multiple sleights of hand. So we compromised: I focused on one card trick, a feint that would be my masterstroke. We always had cards around - as I said, poker is a holiday religion in itself. I don't remember the trick exactly, but I remember practicing it and practicing it. I was gonna show everyone the next day just how crafty I was. And then the next day came, and I tried it in front of an adoring* crowd. And I failed miserably. But shortly after the grub was on, and all disappointment was forgotten. But the memory of the magic show has always remained.

And oh, the food. In assemblage at my grandparents' house are Turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, yams, corn, and various other cooked vegetables that nobody under 30 would eat, rolls w/ butter, cottage cheese, a smattering of cold salads concocted using whatever was in the refrigerator and needed to be liquidated. And then the desserts: pumpkin pie, both solid and fluffy, pecan pie, sweet potato pie, gallons of whipped cream, pumpkin gingerbread trifle, fudge, and various things that are already bad for you dipped in white or milk chocolate almond bark to intensify the health risks.

We usually have a lot of people. And we usually have a lot of food. So much food, in fact, that one kitchen far from suffices. Luckily for my grandmother, 2 of her daughters never left the nest. My mother lives less than 100 yards from my grandparents door, while her younger sister is even closer. Much like the pieces of a supertanker are fabricated elsewhere and then assembled in dry dock, so is our Thanksgiving meal. The obvious difference being that you don't eat a supertanker. In most cases. And thus arises my first Thanksgiving task: food courier. I arrive at my parents house and receive the customary spiel from my mother about how she was up all night cooking and how thankful we should all be. I simply smile and nod ... and tell her that if she really loved me she'd get me a pony. Then it is time for able-bodied Maddog to start hauling food from satellite kitchen 1 to the food HQ. It's not far, but it's strewn with obstacles. 2 doors at my parents house and then a gate at my parents house. Then another gate to cross my grandparents' yard. As one trundles across the lawn, the mind starts to wander. If one is carrying something good, mashed potatoes for instance, he wonders: if I stick my face into this pot of mashed potatoes, how severe will the burns be, and is it worth it? If it's something nasty, like cooked cauliflower: what a shame that there is a family shortage of dogs at the moment. And then, hands full, you arrive at my grandparents door. What follows usually goes like this:

Me: Hands full, uses free appendage - aka, foot - to attempt to knock on door.
Elder person: (Cousin!) get the door!!!
Cousin, pregnant, high, maybe both: What?!!!
Elder: GET THE DOOR!!!!
Cousin: Why?!!!
Elder: JUST OPEN THE GOD-DAMNED DOOR!!
Cousin, shuffling towards the door, eventually opening it: Oh. It's you.
Me: Barely conceals scorn, goes inside, drops of food.
Elder: How's your mom doing?
Me: Smart-assed comment. Goes back for another load, until all the food has reached HQ.

My second and final Thanksgiving task involves chairs. Each and every year, we have thanksgiving in the same room at my Grandparents' house. And year after year we use every chair in the house, as well as those from my aunt's house next door. If we were scientists, we would use the repeated results of this experiment to surmise it will happen in the future. But nobody ever seems to remember this until I show up, and am told, inevitably, to go get chairs. "Oh, and take cousins x, y, and z with you."

Were laziness a competitive activity, I would very likely be a first-ballot hall of famer. Now imagine that x, y, and z can be chosen out of a pool of nearly 10 cousins, that each is younger than me ... and each is lazier. Now imagine that some of these cousins are females with boyfriends who can also be volunteered for chair duty. And then that those boyfriends are even lazier than my cousins. I think you see what I'm working with here. Thus, after much complaining, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments, we finally get the chairs around, and it's time to eat.

In cooking magazines and Norman Rockwell paintings, a turkey looks like this. In my family, a turkey never looks like that. We're not big on the aesthetics of the bird, but the eating of it. And we don't put stuffing inside it. Why? Have you ever been cooked in the nasty insides of a bird. Didn't think so. We respect stuffing far too much for any of that noise. We always have ham at Thanksgiving as well. To some this may be apostasy, but in my family it's normal, and it's all because of my dad. He doesn't eat turkey. Or chicken. Or fish. Or any seafood. Or beef roast. Yes, my old man is high maintenance. But he does love him some ham.

The strangest thing, to me, about our Thanksgiving is our love of "noodles." I have no idea if any other family eats "noodles" for thanksgiving. I detest them, and honestly it's hard to describe them. They are handmade egg noodles, laboriously manufactured by my mother. These beauts are cooked to the texture of a worm (I assume, having never eaten a worm) and have some sort of gravy. For 3/4 of my family they are the highlight of Thanksgiving - piled upon mashed potatoes at a ratio of 3:1. In fact, that my mother makes the best noodles in the family gives her some sort of cult noodle status. However, those of us who remain avoid them at all costs.

My thing, unquestionably, is the mashed potatoes. I am known as the mashed potatoes "asshole" because I hate instant mashed potatoes and refuse to eat them. Thus every Thanksgiving they make real mashed potatoes and complain about it. I'd feel bad, except that I'm doing everyone a favor. Is there anything in this world better than true mashed potatoes? And is there ever a bigger discrepancy between two "similar" items than instant and genuine mashed potatoes? Seriously. I'm asking.

So we eat. And we eat. And we eat. And then, after some have moved on to poker, others to a movie, and a few weaklings have beached, unable to move for a while, we complain about how much we ate. Ironically enough, we continue to eat. Grazing, pecking, and somehow not sending our poor bodies into shock. But more than that, we have fun. In a family full of drama, feuds, and world-class grudge holders, for a day at least we act like we like each other, like we actually enjoy each others' company.

Yeah, you knew this shit would end in a cheesy fashion. It always does.