why i love thanksgiving

a fifth-grade style writing exercise

Carol Bly, my writing teacher, harbors a thinly veiled disdain for Thanksgiving. She keeps giving us writing exercises (see below) in which we must write about a holiday drama. She's given a few examples, like the time Robert told off his aunt at post-dinner pumpkin pie, and talks about what a hotbed of psychological turmoil surrounds the dinner table.

A classmate asked her what the deal was. Carol admitted that she isn't thrilled with Thanksgiving, and a number of classmates said they hate the holiday, too. Hate it. It's purposeless and a lot of work to get a bunch of people together who have to pretend they're not going crazy to get it all over with.

Pish.

I love Thanksgiving.

It's non-secular, (although I like most secular holidays, I like that it isn't about organized religion) all about food and gratitude. Gratitude is underrated.

It celebrates a friendly union between two enemies through food. Food is powerful stuff. I have a problem with romanticizing the relationship between invaders and natives, yes, but it's not so much about that anymore. It's grown into being about family and stopping to appreciate the good things. It's about cooking and eating, which are historically fantastic methods of human bonding. In my family, it's about seeing the new babies that have been born or adopted in the past year, like my baby cousin Lucy from China.

You dress in warm clothes because the business and heat of summer are officially over. This is key: Thanksgiving rocks because it marks the point where things calm down and we all turn inward and get a little solitude after an extroverted summer. I'm a writer, so I dig that.

You cook good stuff. The house smells good. You get together people you love. (Frankly, I avoid people that don't make me feel good. It's a holiday for chrissake, and life's too short.) You eat a ton. You take a nap. You drink good wine and eat pie. I hardly ever eat pie. My sisters and I make lists of all the things we're thankful for and read our lists from the previous year, which usually makes us laugh till we just about pee our pants. Then you sleep and eat more. When else can you watch at 35 foot tall Wonderdog falloon float down Madison Avenue? Never.

I am single. I know my friend Voix is/was a little bit bummed not to have a snuggly signif for the holidays, and I can relate. But I'm telling you--there are benefits.

Single people usually get adopted into another person's family holidays if they're too far from their own, and my single friends kind of band together. Single folks often get to spend holidays with different loved ones and possibly an eclectic group of cool people that they might otherwise see.

The Voix is in Arizona with some dear friends right now having a fab time. Today, my friend Matt is flying in from Portland. Matt grew up three blocks away from me and we've been friends forever. I haven't seen him in age and our Thanksgiving is going to be fantastic. If I had a signif, would Matt be coming to spend a ton of Q.T. with me? Maybe, but I doubt it. I'd be more likely to spend the holiday at Mr. Signif's parents house (or dragging him to mine) where one of us spends the day making small talk with strangers. There's nothing wrong with that--but there's plenty of time for it down the road. That's all I'm saying.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go tidy up for my guest, get my fireplace going, light my candle that smells like pumpkin spice and decanter a pinot noir. All the best....

pickled

I was far too pregnant to cook a 20 pound turkey. I gave the job to my younger brother Jason, fresh off the plane from Africa. Two years in the Peace Corps, Jason’s the only one who didn’t give a told-you-so when I bailed. So I’m stubborn and thought I could peel a hundred potatoes at 8½ months pregnant. Forget it.

Everyone was coming to my house as planned, and my only job was to lie on the couch with my legs propped up and to do what I pleased. This, for me, was to eat pickled eggs. Old pickled pregnant lady, I was perfectly happy with a big jar of purple eggs swimming in purple juice eating them one by one. Eat them slower, get more of them down.

Jason and his girlfriend Martha clinked and clanked around in the kitchen while I watched a giant 35 foot tall Barbie falloon float down Madison Avenue in the TV room, my legs propped on several pillows. Jason appeared in the doorway with a soup pot.

“They just said there are 3.4 million flecks of glitter on Barbie’s purse,” I said. “Get a load of that.” I fished in my big glass jar for another.

“Can you mash these?” he put the pot on the coffee table. I scooted myself upright on the couch.

“Three point four million,” I said. “That’ a truckload of glitter, my friend.” I put the pot next to me on the couch. “What? Beans?”

“Lentils,” he said. I looked at him, And? “I need you to mash them for me.” My husband, Rick, was walked through the room to get the vacuum cleaner off the back porch.

“Instead of a traditional Thanksgiving with all of us sitting around romanticizing the genocide of Native Americans by European invaders,” Jason said, “this year we’re going to eat a traditional African meal I learned to cook in Kebri Dehar.” Rick stopped in his tracks.

“Soooo no turkey, potatoes, pie, gravy—” Rick said.

“Nope,” Jason said.

“Creamed corn?”

“No.”

“Sweet potato marshmallow goo?”

“Nooo!” Martha sang from the kitchen?

“You can still watch football,” Jason said.

“Alrighty.” I said, “Where’s the pestle?” And I mashed.

By the time Dad, and Grandma arrived, Jason was spooning the top three inches off each pot of lentils so Martha could take the pots into the back yard, still smoking, to scrape the black layer of burned crust off the bottom. Our father sat in the living room telling his half-deaf mother that women are incapable of getting a perfect math score on the GMAT because they’re too emotional.

I raced my granny, 95 now, to the table, which Rick had decked out with paper cutouts of turkeys and cornucopias because he a very cute husband. Dad moved on to his next favorite task to insulting womankind (both of which he’s mastered): drinking wine. Jason served each of us a plate of spongy bread.

Grandma said to me, “Laney, I think Jason forgot to set the table.”

“Gram,” Jason said, "the Injera is your silver wear.” He spooned bean paste on her flat bread. You use your fingers to scoop up the food instead of a fork.”

“What the hell, Jason?” Grandma said. Bubbles broke through the soupy beans like gas through molten lava on Mars. Everyone looked at my brother. Yeah, Jason.

“Well, this is Misir Alicha on Injera, and this,” he stirred a pot of stew that looked like stringy cabbage in opaque bullion, “is Quanta FirFir. Dried beef stew in BerBere sauce.”

“Where’s the real food?” Gram said.

“Grandma—this is a traditional Ethiopian dish. I learned to cook it in the Peace Corps. I was given the honor of cooking this year’s family Thanksgiving’s meal and I’ve chosen to celebrate, I mean, I've chosen for us to celebrate, together, cultural diversity rather than the violent oppression of English Colonization.”

Dad poured himself some more white zin to break the awkward silence.

“You eat all this food with your hands,” I said. “See?” and I scooped up a spoonful of the bean mush and sponge bread with my purple-stained fingers and shoved it in my mouth. “Oh, dear God, Jason. I love you, man, but you can’t cook. Little Bunny Fu-Fu or anything.” Impossible to tease my brother without getting a smile out of him.

“It’s FurFur, Lane.”

There was a loud crash from the kitchen. After several moments of pause for a mental Holy Shit, Rick ran into the kitchen. I hobbled behind him. The floor was covered with purple juice.

“Oh my God, my pickled eggs!” I said.

“Oh my God, she made a pizza!” Rick stood behind me. Martha held a pepperoni pizza with a fish-shaped oven mitt.

“I’m so sorry,” Martha said. “I hit the jar with my elbow.” Rick lunged for the pizza like it was a mirage in a desert. Martha handed him the pizza slicer before he shoved the thing in his mouth whole.

“Jason, there are some rags in the laundry room,” Rick said. “You clean up the juice. Honey,” he said to me. I was trying my damndest to pick an egg up off the floor. My God! The eggs! Purple eggs rolled everywhere, under the kitchen table, under the cabinets, down the stairs to the back porch. “Go back to the dining room, Okay? and keep your grandmother busy for a few minutes.” Every time I bent to and reach for it I nudged it with my foot and the egg slid away.

“Slippery bastards.”

“Baby?”

“Okay, okay,” I said. I walked back to the dining room. My socks, dyed purple and soaked with juice, slopped on the linoleum.

Neruda

i sleep with pablo on
the empty
pillow not asleep

my lover
when there is none
i lie
on my side

your hip, he says,
curves up
from the blue sheets
like an island
from the sea.

WD-40

The smell of WD-40 still reminds her of heartache. For nights after Tom left Amanda woke up thinking she felt the lens of his glasses on the back of her neck. Her mother told her it would be therapeutic to grow a garden, so she grow a 5 by 10 plot of all hot peppers, green, red, purple. Once, before taking a job at her father’s hardware store, she ate three of them whole to remind herself that she could still feel.

Farmers came into the store at 7 a.m. and taught Amanda the fine art of passing time through idle distractions: weather, animals, births, deaths, speculation. She went to the basement where the bike shop was and sorted live bait into tins—ten worms per tin. She pinched worms in half to see if they really grew back, to see if both ends of a worm could still squirm and grow if it was cut in two. They could.

At 11:00 her Uncle Ted took her to her piano lesson in his blue Ford pickup. They kicked up gravel on Dustman Road and he rambled on about Mexicans taking jobs and spreading tuberculosis. He went on about Democrats and Jesus and how if Jesus Christ ran against Hitler, and Jesus was a Democrat he’d still vote Republican.

Mrs. Reid’s piano room had red carpet and floor-to-ceiling curtains, white with red roses in full bloom. She wore a wide brimmed red hat. Mrs. Reid offered her sugar cookies and Sprite and cursed the meter of rock and roll under her breath. When she finally got to sitting on her stool she said to Amanda, “Now, Mandy, loosen your shoulders. The first thing you got to do when you sit down at your instrument is relax,” and she put a hand on her shoulder. The rope that held Mandy’s shoulders tight released letting them curve downward. “There,” she said, “And now we may begin.”

Every once in a while on the drive back to the hardware store, Uncle Ted said something brilliant. “This is the best time of your life you know.” She played with the fringe on her jean shorts. “The world is yours Amanda. You’re a young woman with nothin’ tyin’ you down.”

She stared at the cornfields. If she stopped her gaze she could see each row as it individually was, straight and narrow with nothing to distinguish a single one from the hundreds of others. They were planted to grow in neat rows, programmed to ripen at the same time and they followed this plan. Up to her thigh by the Fourth of July, to her left and right and ahead and behind. The strain of focusing her eyes on something still in a speeding truck made her dizzy. She could have thrown up. She thought she might scream something obscene or jump out the car door. What an inescapable quantity of such sameness! She relaxed her eyes and the rows went blurry.

“Soon enough you’ll have a husband and family and maybe a career. You’ll have great things, but those tie you down. You got the whole world to chase after. Now’s when you live on your own terms.” He rolled down the window and spat something onto the speeding highway. “You don’t owe anybody money, you don’t have mouths to feed. I know life’s looking empty right now with that boy and all,” What did he know about any boy? Hadn’t he shut up yet? “But it isn’t. It’s so full you hardly know what to do with it. You sit around that store assemblin’ vacuum cleaners, one day you’ll wake up with a life full of stuff you can’t get out of. You mark my word.” She didn’t say anything. She just tapped out some scales on her leg, lifting her ring finger extra high for the D flat.

Ode to the M, T, W Receptionist

Hi Mary! [insert smiley here]

I don't know if someone told you,
but the pink message pad
is for P&H, not B&V.
The white pad is for B&V.

I noticed that you have not been using the white pad
at all
as there are no yellow carbon copies of yours.
Is something wrong?

Please write down a message
for Bob, and John
even if you put their callers
in voicemail--
on the white pad.
Not the pink. Not the pink.

Only leave a pink
(pink!)
note for Tom and Jackie
when there is a message to return a call,
but no voicemail.

Announce calls
Except!
Tom. Tom's callers
are confidential. Sensitive.

Jackie is unavailable
for Zach S.
Always.
Do not leave a pink note
for him.

I have moved the chocolates
for the candy dish
as I notice
my hiding place
is not so secret
after all.

Mitzi.

seven things

Stolen/inspired from/by Jessi, who stole it from Michele, who stole it from someone else.

Seven lists of Sevens:

7 Things I plan to do before I die:

1. Teach at a university.
2. Write a piece of quality literature.
3. Give and give and improve people's lives.
4. Live abroad. Again.
5. Learn how to successfully make my little sister's chocolate chip cookies.
6. Learn to play the piano. Well.
7. Live in the same city as my best friend again.

7 Things I can do:

1. Write.
2. Pop popcorn in a wok.
3. Help troubled friends.
4. Pull off hot pants.
5. Quit demeaning jobs.
6. Keep in touch.
7. Sell everything I own and move to a new, unfamiliar place.

7 Things I can't do:

1. Math
2. Just stop loving.
3. Tolerate abusive jobs/relationships/situations.
4. Keep my mouth shut.
5. Live far away from the ocean (currently agonizing over this).
6. Ski.
7. Say goodbye to my dad without crying.

7 Things that attract me to the opposite sex:

1. Respectful treatment and self confidence. A man who can love well and act well and still be independent.
2. Smart, sharp sense of humor and wit.
3. Must. Read. Books.
4. Lanky, yes. Athletic. Taller than me. I usually go for the chiseled thing. Five-o'clock shadows are sweet.
5. The ability to handle me well. I'm no pushover, and he shouldn't be either.
6. Quality snuggler.
7. Honest. Not just "he doesn't lie," I mean the no-game-playing open, communicative type.

7 Things I say most often:

1. Shut UP.
2. You know it.
3. Tell me more about...
4. Good morning, [Name of Big Boring Law Firm], this is Mary may I help you?
5. No sweat.
6. Visit me!
7. You have GOT to be kidding me.

7 Albums on constant rotation:

1. Family Cabin Mix #1
2. Vivaldi's 4 Seasons
3. Bob Marley and the Wailers
4. Redbird, Kris Delmhurst
5. Lenny Kravitz, Greatest Hits
6. Irresistible Bliss by... I'm spacing the band
7. Guero, Beck

7 Celebrity Crushes (I so don't watch TV... this'll be a challenge)

1. Lenny. When he had dreads.
2. Matthew McConughey, a.k.a. My Future Boyfriend.
3. Pablo Neruda.
4. Ricky Schroeder, circa Silver Spoons. My sisters and I used to fight about who would marry him when we grew up.
5. Oh, what's his name. Okay, I suck at crushing on celebrities. Heath Ledger! That's who I'm thinking of! Heath! I ran into him (and Naomi, but whatever) outside a Burger King in Perth. No shit.
6. The guy from the old Gap commercial. Hot damn.
7. Yeah, sorry. That's all I got.

Cavu

My ex-flight attendant sister, Emily and I had a conversation about Cavu when I was visiting her in Portland, Oregon in July. Cavu is an aviation term meaning Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited. It means, in aviation context, that the sky is gorgeous and clear and empty and that the pilot can hit the gas and soar freely into the glorious abyss of space without needing to worry about any obsticles.

I'd moved to Portland before she did, in 1998, with no real plan or commitment. I'd just graduated college and life was an open abyss of freedom. Visibility unlimited. Without a thought about possible obsticles, I went for it. I was niave, of course, and my lack of worry had more to do with my not knowing what there was to worry about. Still--it's stuck with me. Not out of being niave or careless, rather, being appreciative that I'm a healthy woman with a good education who lives in a country where I will be supported and can support myself if I screw up. I see a wide open sky that's inviting and blue, I hit the gas.