well, i won’t say much about thanksgiving…what is there to say when you’re in a house with foot-and-knee-straining tile floors, your mother has a broken foot, and your brother brings home a very nice mexican girl (invited, not by your brother, but by your father) who cannot speak english; yes, this is the self-same brother of whom you learn, from your 83 year-old latin grandmother, that he believes to have been given the gift of celibacy (a tid-bit you find very curious and want to ask him about…but how do you ask this self-same brother who who has a passel of best-friends, all of whom are single girls, all of whom reside in different cities, whether, in fact, he has decided now, here in his late 20s, to remain celibate?); you learn this from the grandmother who is convinced she is going senile (not the 67 year-old step-grandmother who lives next door and believes you to be her eldest step-son; no, the one who is so worried about her impending dementia that she cannot sleep at night without pills…and, to be fair, the docs do say that she is showing signs of alzheimers, but she is still sharp enough to be rude in all the ways she’s always been rude to other latins, especially this mexican girl, unless, of course, these latins are highly educated and/or come from old money)...what is there to say when the girl brought home by your brother spends most of the time depressed because no speaks to her (your latin grandmother won’t because she is a female friend of her favorite grandchild, the grandchild whose name she will call upon to give you and your sister a guilt trip, the grandchild who would sit on her lap at 4 and eat candy and watch days of our lives when your mother had specifically requested that she neither let us watch soap-operas nor eat candy in the middle of the day…you’re mother doesn’t and you don’t know why, except that she’s run ragged caring for the grandmother who lives next door (who now only has three conversations a day, over and over and over again) that she hasn’t been paying attention to things and so answers in english when your dad, your brother and you ask her questions in spanish to include the girl, but then again, she’s sick with a cold or something, she’s got a broken foot, and she’s run ragged…your adopted sisters don’t because they can’t speak spanish anymore, and the one that does is too busy making eyes at her much younger boyfriend…you don’t because you spend two straight days in the kitchen cooking for 12 people, and when not cooking you try to relieve your wife from caring for your 9 month-old…and your wife tries by asking your brother to translate for her, but he, for some reason, proves to be a rather poor translator)...what is there to say when this girl confesses that she was so looking forward to meeting your brother’s family because he, like your sister (who is a missionary far-far-away, but has called to let everyone know how much she wants to be a part of this circus), has an idealized view of what his family is and was, and she has found out first-hand that we are just a bunch of well-meaning maniacs…what is there to say when thanksgiving is your father’s favorite holiday because it has no pagan undertones, but he spends it working in an emergency room and so you eat thanksgiving on friday (because he never remembers when thanksgiving is and has for the past 4 or 5 years voluntarily put his name down to work on this most united-statsian of holidays)...and then you make an ass of yourself because you, after having spent 12 hours in the kitchen the previous day, have been up since 8 cooking and are hungry (even as a baby you would cry when mom fed you too slowly, and the family joke is to not bother you when hungry because who knows whether the joker will leave with their life…but you don’t snack too much while cooking because you don’t want it to spoil the meal, consequently you are famished and in a rather bad mood); but dad wants to be thankful and have a 30 minute devotional before eating, while you just want to eat; and as you finish getting things together and on to the table, your mother and grandmother keep standing over the stove and in your way, and your grandmother makes a snarky remark about how your gravy is going to turn out lumpy (which it didn’t, but she was right in that you didn’t follow procedure) and you snap at her; all the while your dad keeps calling you into the living room to take part of the singing (which, except for one song is all in english…and so high church that only those older than 30 know the songs); and you keep putting things on the table, now frustrated because the homemade yeast rolls you made (folding and freezing, folding and freezing and letting them rise) are no longer warm, and now even more frustrated because you realize how petty it is to worry about whether this meal you’ve been preparing for two days is cold or not when they are singing songs to God; them so spiritual and you so base and material; yet you get your way and they come to the table; they come not to pray and eat, however; instead to read a thirty verse psalm about thanksgiving and then have a five minute prayer (and the sweet-potatoes with jalapeños, cumin, thyme and cream-cheese are cold, as are the mashed yukon golds with roasted garlic and brie) and then a song…and you blow up when your father proposes a toast because you can’t take it anymore and when everyone else was at their most thankful you ruin the meal that you’d spent 2 days cooking and that had been elaborately blessed.

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