Roadkill to Perdition

In years prior, when I’ve been devoid of family obligations, holidays passed as inert ticks on my calendar, neither more nor less important than any other day. This went double for the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s Eve trifecta, where my only registration of the “Seasons” lay in a December-based confusion over why there were suddenly no parking spaces at the mall.

Thanksgiving held a particular contempt for me. First, I don’t like turkey. I like it better now, but I come from a long line of hillbillies famed for their overcooking. For them, nothing is ‘done’ unless it’s been boiled until all shape, texture, and resemblance to food disappears. Once that’s completed, all items must be served under a fried flour gravy with white bread aplenty available for dipping and sopping. Let me tell you: you’ve not retched until you’ve had dinner made this way.

Both sides of my family balked at serving potatoes, and so the dinner starring Sawdust-Dry Bird had instant potato buds as its supporting actress. “Vegetables” consisted of green beans, corn, and hominy grits, all from cans and all boiled into submission, and the pies (pumpkin only) came prepared with canned filling with ingredient lists so long, they carried to the underside of the label. Nobody ever thought to add a little nutmeg or even a sprinkle of cinnamon to these “pies”. What for? Read the can-it says ‘pumpkin pie filling’. What else do you need? Whenever anyone remembered to bring cranberries, they arrived in the jelly form and were dumped onto a turkey-shaped serving plate, the grooves from the metal can intact in the purple form.

No one in my family drinks alcohol. This is largely religion-based, as both sides attend thrice-weekly services at (different) fundamentalist churches. I did have one grandfather who joined AA in the 1940s, but everyone else is a voluntary teetotaler. So there’s no wine with dinner, no beer for the football, and certainly no spirit(s) of any kind. Soft drinks were prohibited as too expensive and as devil’s drinks, since they could sometimes be mixed with liquor (what liquor?!), and the well water proved undrinkable, even after boiling. So most of us either drank milk (whole milk only--none of that ‘city-fied’ milk for this family), or buttermilk with chunks of corn bread crumbled into it. Silence ruled as the whole of the family gathered at the table, heads already bowed and arms braced against the chair backs to hold themselves up while the Patriarch delivered a 15-minute blessing over the ‘food’.

Maybe my hatred of Thanksgiving is more obvious than I’d realized.

On several occasions, I managed to convince my then-partners to share my "Down with Turkey!" attitude. We declared Thanksgiving a Free Day, one to do whatever we wanted. I wrote, my partner did whatever pleased him, and later, if we felt like it, we went out for a movie. I would buy a paper with the Black Friday advertisements, and together, my partner and I would choose the best place to go and watch the crowds battle one another for that year’s Chosen Gift.

My Thanksgiving Loathe took its own holiday the last few years, since “X” preferred it above all others. I figured since I still got to forego Christmas and New Year’s (I prefer to get drunk at home--it’s easier to get naked, and there’s no (real) threat of arrest), I compromised and agreed to produce a November feast. Luckily, his family lives far away and he doesn’t speak to them, so apart from one year when my Dad arrived, it was just the 2 of us, and later, DS. I bought the smallest turkey I could find, I made real potatoes, and there wasn’t a can or a cranberry to be found anywhere. We scoured the ads together, I let him watch porn on the big television, and life was generally grand.

Two adults can only down so much bird, however, and the smallest turkey I ever bought was a twelve-pounder. So every year when Thanksgiving closed, I found myself with a week’s worth of fowl foodstuffs. Once, faced with the post-dinner carcass and yet another round of turkey “dash” dishes (turkey-casserole, turkey-salad, etc.), I concocted a recipe for turkey-chip cookies. That would work, right? Surely brown sugar and peanut butter chunks could help a spoonful of turkey go down in a more delightful way.

This year, together again and at last with my man, I faced my own fears and volunteered to go away with him for Thanksgiving. He spoke so highly of his friends and with such enthusiasm for the house and the grounds that even I, theTurkey Scrooge, found myself anticipating the event. We planned our trip, an 800-mile trek across 3 states and 2 time zones, down to the minute. We’d drop off DS with his Granny, who was conveniently located midway between Us and The Dinner Destination, spend the night, and then drive on to the East. On the way back, we’d reverse ourselves.

“Granny”, my mother, a normally sedate and under-expressive senior, donned her party hat in anticipation of DS’s arrival. She planned DS’s itinerary to within an inch of his attention span, and when I joked that we might change our plans, she threatened to drive all the way out here, just so she could voice her displeasure straight to my face.

The first piece of the trip passed utterly without incident. It saddened me to leave DS behind, but I was clearly the only one having issue. Granny shoved me away so hard I nearly missed kissing DS goodbye. He barely kissed me back, he was so eager to close his own car door and head off to the park with this sparkling lady who let him eat cookies and swim in cold weather.

Howard and I drove east out of Ohio and slid into Pennsylvania. Barely 10 miles on to I-80, I spotted a dead deer on the shoulder. I turned away quickly, in part to keep my eyes on the road, and in part to prevent myself from registering what was obviously a high-impact crash. Fluke, I thought. Bad luck. I’m sure that’s the last of it.

As it turns out, Pennsylvania interstates and mountain wildlife mix about as well as turkey gravy and chocolate chips. In all, I counted twelve deer, 2 coyotes, 3 cats, a dog and a fox. Each time a carcass appeared, my shoulders stiffened closer to my ears. My hands strangled the steering wheel and my conversation with Howard reduced to grunts and nods. By the time we switched seats so Howard could navigate the twisty roads up to his friend’s place, my neck throbbed with tension and I could not uncurl my fingers. I massaged my hands as Howard drove us from one winding road to another. I’m surrounded by dead things as I journey to meet a houseful of strangers for a holiday I’ve shunned for twenty years. Oh, happy day.

I won’t betray the privacy of my hosts or the other guests in the house, primarily because I would want the same courtesy. Suffice to say that I’m glad I went, I learned a lot about myself and about people who actually enjoy Thanksgiving, and I am grateful to all those who shared their holiday with me.

On Friday morning, still beaming from a Thanksgiving consumption level that could only be described as virtuous, my mother called me and said, “DS really needed to hear your voice.”

We left within the hour.

I had suffered from the moment my mother drove away with DS, but I stuffed it away, certain that everyone’s counsel about ‘he’ll be all right’ was true. And he was all right. Until her call on Friday morning, he’d been content to shout “Hi, Mommy!” from across the room, rather than take a second away from playtime with cousin J---. However, having heard those words from my Mother, whose motto in her golden years has been, “It’s not worth calling unless somebody’s been transferred to a hospice”, I simply could not bear another minute without my little man.

I’ll skip the homebound carrion count, except to note that there were more, but I noticed them less. I rushed Howard through dinner and barely gave him time to buckle his seat belt before barreling down the road to my mother’s house. I found DS in the living room, so clearly busy with his cousin that when I asked him for a hug hello, he got up, but his eyes never left the spot where he and J--- were playing smash ‘em up cars. When I asked DS if he wanted to come back to the hotel with us, he declined, and then when I asked if he was sure, he refused. Refused! I left, dejected, but also secretly relieved. Yeah, I probably took the phone call too hard, and yeah, I cut short my adults-only time with Howard, but I had to see my DS.

Granny crabbed all through breakfast the next morning, but she let go when it was time. She stuffed his luggage full of books and toys and a generous check for the swing set I plan to buy next spring. She also included a button-down oxford cloth shirt that looks distinctly like the things my brother was forced to wear at Thanksgivings past. Guess how often he'll wear that?

Good job, Granny, and thank you, cousin J---. You both seemed completely oblivious to DS’s condition, and treated him like the happy, well-adjusted child he was while in your care. Thanks to my hosts and fellow housemates: may your lives be filled with all the holiday gatherings you wish for.

Oh, and guess what? 187.75 pounds this morning. I lost all that crap-tacular Transition Weight, and 2.25 pounds more besides and I did it over "Thucky" Thursday. How cool is that?

Maybe Thanksgiving is an okay holiday after all.

A the T(urkey)