This is the year the whole family is coming to our house to celebrate Thanksgiving. We do it every other year, and our home is typically the epicenter of the event. While Thanksgiving happens at our house every year, during “off” years, family members spend the holiday with their spouses’ extended family, which often involves some travelling, so the gathering at my home is quite small. Usually me, my wife, the kids, and my wife’s parents are the only attendees.
During “on” years, we just leave the door unlocked and a constant flow of people wander in and out throughout the entire week. Most of them belong here, however we have discovered a few strays on occasion. The guestlist includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, spouses, and the periodic boyfriend or girlfriend. It’s quite the spectacle.
The festivities began on Tuesday when the girls got home from college and we began food preparation, and they will continue until sometime on Sunday when I finally convince the remaining stragglers to get the hell out of my house and return to their own lives.
I look forward to these get togethers very much, and it’s always a great deal of fun … until people actually get here.
Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with my family. But, to be perfectly clear, most of my family is already dead, so it’s my wife’s family that comes to the house over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I still enjoy spending time with all of them, but I must admit that there are times that I don’t think they like me very much.
Why do I think this? It’s mostly just subtle looks and comments that I catch from time to time. Well, that and the fact that they all keep telling my wife that she settled when she got married, and that she could have done way better than end up with me. The general statement wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep coming up with brand new reasons to support their argument. The discussions can get quite lengthy.
The least they could do is wait until I’ve left the room to start talking about me.
Still, I try to be friendly and get along with everybody. I help with preparing dinner, keep plenty of alcohol flowing, and absolutely refuse to discuss politics even though my wife’s entire family seems to have no freaking clue about … nope. Not going to do it. I promised my wife I would behave.
So, I smile and try to be a good host. Two years ago, I even hand baked several pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving dinner. I grew sugar pumpkins in my garden during the summer, harvested them, prepped them and baked them. I took the baked pumpkins and pulped them into homemade pumpkin puree which I then placed into the freezer until Thanksgiving. I made pie crust from scratch and used the puree to create a pumpkin pie filling from an old family recipe.
When I served the pies after an enormous meal that my wife and mother-in-law cooked, everyone happily took some. I was then subjected to comments like, “Can I get some more whipped cream on this? I can still taste the pie.”
Honestly, it doesn’t really hurt my feelings that much anymore. For the most part, I’ve gotten used to it. The quiet sobbing in a dark closet is mostly unrelated to their treatment of me. My deep-rooted psychological problems go much further back than their dismissive treatment, but we can talk about my childhood on some other day.
I think my brother-in-law is the only one in my wife’s family that likes me. He lives on the opposite end of the country, so can’t make it to our house this year. With 2,500 miles of cornfields, mountains and deserts between us, he has demonstrated that he really knows how to respect a person’s personal space. You have to love a guy who understands boundaries.
And, on the topic of boundaries, what do twenty people do when they’re all crammed into the same house together for an entire week? I confess, I’m not really sure. I think there are some video games, puzzles, movies, board games, and other activities, but I can’t be completely certain. You see, the one thing I do recall is that there is a great deal of eating and drinking, and between those two activities there is a lot of fuzzy gray memories where I’m not totally conscious of what’s happening around me.
I’m not complaining, mind you. I think the absolute best part of Thanksgiving weekend is the fact that I can remember so little of it. If I remembered more, I might not be willing to stick around for the next one. I have heard women say that the only reason they have more than one child is because they tend to forget about the pain of childbirth after the child is born. I guess Thanksgiving is like that for me.
Except pregnant women have access to really good drugs, and I have to content myself with the gin in the liquor cabinet.
That’s okay, though. I’ll make it work.