Giving Thanks Our Way (Updated Version)

Apparently, Trish, my blog-prodder as I have just now dubbed her, needs a fix. And far be it from me to deprive her, the catalyst for this work of genius. I needed to purge anyway.
Stella Benson wrote, "Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive." If only other families could swap insults with impunity the way mine does, there would be no petty or protracted estrangements & Jerry Springer would be out of a job.
While we looked forward to it, we all were a little apprehensive as well (because we've done it before). Before we got there, my sister Kelly emailed me & my brother Kenny (or "Ken" as he is known outside the family) to say, "I'm looking forward to y'all getting on my nerves this weekend." That was so sweet.
Picture this. Seven adults, 6 kids & 2 dogs cooped up in a 3-bedroom, 2-bath farmhouse the size of a double-wide. (Well, it may technically be a double-wide, but it's so well-disguised that my dad always joked a tornado could never find it.) It's probably the only 20-year-old pre-fab dwelling in Hico, Texas or anywhere else, with hardwood floors & ceramic tile. However, the Winnebago-style Fiberglas showers have yet to be upgraded to imported Venetian marble. I just realized what a spoiled, upper-middle-class brat I sound like. "Ooh, so many people in a 'tiny' 3-bedroom…" A lot of families in this world probably happily sleep that many in one room. In fact, my Russian sister-in-law, Anya, told me she felt right at home with so many people in what seemed like such a small space.
So when we get there late Wed. night, everyone else is way ahead of us in the celebrating department. They started the party without us. That's the way we roll. You'll be there when you get there, fend for yourself on the food & drink & snooze you lose. So the music is blaring, margaritas are flowing & Anya is dancing as my nieces & nephews run amok. Kenny is vegging on the couch; Kelly & Mom are hiding out in the kitchen probably making sure all the tequila is either gone or well-hidden before I arrive. Mom already looks pale & what my sister refers to as "beat down" while Kelly is in full party mode. Anya really wants to go with Kelly & me to a nearby dive bar frequented no doubt by truckers with more wheels than teeth, bikers (not the Lance Armstrong kind) & leathery tattooed barflies. Sure, it would be a BLAST, but we'd have been torn apart & eaten alive while the jukebox played the theme song from Dukes of Hazzard or maybe some ZZ-Top or 'Skynyrd. To top it off, for some reason, Anya really wanted to pretend to be a deaf mute when we got there. Just for fun. It would have provided some great material, but we wussed out.
Katy's & Mom's birthday was Friday & Luke's is this Friday, so we always celebrate them the day after Thanksgiving. We all also brought gifts for each other's kids. Not so much to keep them from feeling left out as to cover birthdays we forgot or to go ahead & get Christmas out of the way. That's just our way. We're slackers. We did hold off on the real birthday presents for the designated day, but the others were distributed at random when whichever kid or kids seemed to need a new distraction. Thank God one of the girls got the High School Musical soundtrack so we could be subjected to it at max volume while Katy, Lydia (my brother's daughter who is just a couple of weeks older than Katy--8), & Chloe (my sister's daughter who is 6, I think) danced & sang with such pure joy, watching them almost cancelled out the adults' collective desire to beat the stereo to death with a sledgehammer.
Luke & the boys went about their business oblivious to the chaos they were both surrounded by & supplementing. My brother's son Peter is 3 & Kelly's son Ben is 4. They played contently with lead-painted Chinese toys or tackled Luke as necessary. Peter is addicted to the Wiggles. (That's one of those sentences that sound inappropriate, but it's not.) He has discovered these Wiggles videos on YouTube. They're montages of Wiggles clips (sounds like a circumcision, but it's not) put to songs that make for incredibly hilarious & inappropriate videos. Look them up sometime. So Peter watches these having no clue that, for example, the Wiggles dancing to I'm too Sexy or driving their big red car as they are Ridin' Dirty is a RIOT to any adult who can appreciate ironic, sophomoric humor.
At some point, we all "bed down" (Kelly & I always use that phrase in the voice we use for such odd phrases & laugh. Not sure why.)

(I need to take a break here & shift gears back to writing a brief before I get an upset stomach from doing something ostensibly superfluous when I should be a more responsible adult. Clients will start calling, so I need to exercise the serious part of my brain. I'll be supplementing this entry soon as there is a lot more material to share.) Stay tuned.

But wait, there's more!
Kelly & I spent most of the weekend making puerile & vulgar references & gestures (one involving the raw turkey neck & some "giblets"). We were in tears laughing so hard at how funny we were. And we couldn't resist adding "so to speak" or "that's what s/he said" to any conceivably vulnerable word or phrase that popped up (so to speak). Mom & Kenny tried to look down their noses at us, but they couldn't help piping up with their own tasteless jokes at every opportunity.
I forgot to say that Kelly outdid me again on Mom's birthday gift. She probably found it on a clearance "As Is" shelf at the Dollar Store or Big Lots. She got her this fancy, tricked out, under the cabinet stereo, radio/CD player, with speakers & a clock & a remote. This is for the tiny kitchen in the glorified double-wide. The remote handily attaches to the nearby fridge with a magnet. Mom was all like, "Oooh, a remote. Just in case I'm at the fridge & can't move that extra three inches to reach the stereo itself." And the thing probably also has a built-in can opener, corkscrew & egg separator, too. Whatever. I got Mom some BeautiControl stuff (that I sell anyway & was probably free). She said, "Didn't you give me some foot cream last time? And what does this mean—'extreme repair'? What are you trying to say?" God she's funny. I also gave her a $50 Target gift card. Kelly was kind enough to point out, "Oh, like there's a Target in Hico." As IF Mom never leaves town. She's always speeding off in her Lexus "crossover" SUV to such hot spots as Waco or Fort Worth. (Btw, why are they called "crossovers"? Like, is it a car that feels like it should have been an SUV? Is it an SUV trapped in a car's body? I guess hermaphrodite was already taken.)
We had dinner later than usual, mainly because we are not planners & because we wanted to overcook everything & get the turkey nice & dry. We have this phrase we use, usually at Christmas, but often at other special occasions. Because we had decided to cut back on the gluttony a little, we only had like 4 starches instead of the usual 16. And we decided to break tradition & have just plain green beans (mistake). Anyway, as we surveyed the spread, Mom shook her head wistfully & said, "Just another disappointing Thanksgiving." And it really was when we tried to eat the chocolate pie. As Mom made the pie, Kenny told her to cut back on the sugar, so it would be more like dark chocolate (which is theoretically fine). He is normally a good cook. Well, she apparently sneaked in some Splenda which only made it worse. But I can't blame her for trying. Anyway, thanks to Kenny, the pie sucked. It tasted like, well, crap. Even Luke wouldn't eat it. That's how bad it was.
And of course Mike was kind enough to remind me that when he & Luke made an escape earlier that day for a Thanksgiving lunch visit to his aunt's house (about an hour away) they enjoyed pecan & coconut crème pies not cooked at my brother's direction. When Mike & Luke were leaving, it was a wet & windy 34 degrees. Luke needed a warmer coat. My brother-in-law, Tim (who coaches baseball at OU) offered up a Sooners hoodie. Luke goes, "I'm not that cold." Smart, that boy.
So one night, I think during Mike's other escape to Arlington to see his best friend & to watch UT get beat by A&M, Kelly, Kenny, Anya & I sat at the dinner table drinking wine & trying to top each other with "my kid is more messed up than yours" stories. Kenny decides to rank the kids mainly in order of cuteness. We were trying to determine the criteria & see if age was a factor (no it was not) & if intelligence played a role (to even the playing field, no). So we were pretending seriously to decide which of the 6 kids was the cutest or best-looking when Mom approached to see what we were discussing. She acted mortified & appalled, but I know she was mentally trying to put them in order. We all wanted our own kids to win, but I truly think my nephew Ben would have been the winner, had we really had to do like a pageant. Peter would have been first runner up only because he's a year younger & still has a shot next year.
So Kenny is a philosophy professor & I told Kelly I get nervous every time I talk to him about anything more important than the Wiggles. She reminded me that I'm smart too & that she's always been the outcast middle child who got her degree in Home Ec. She said, "Jill, Kenny is only like on a balcony above you as far as intelligence. He's a Mount Everest above me." So that made me feel pretty good.
We left Saturday morning so we were going to miss the parade of lights that night in downtown Hico where Mom was to judge some no doubt fabulous crepe paper floats & the highly-anticipated doggie fashion show. I was disappointed to miss that, only because of the great fodder I could have collected.

So it was the second Thanksgiving without Dad. If he had been there, it would not have been such a loud, wheels-off free-for-all. We would have had dinner on a schedule so we'd be done in time for the Cowboy game. The kids would've been a little better behaved & my sister, brother & I would've had even more wine & probably more civilized conversation. Things were not the same. Even sameness is temporary. We could see him rolling his eyes at our absolute lack of control & I think he was probably glad he wasn't in the middle of it. We filled the empty space with such deep gratitude for 6 healthy kids who rarely see each other & when they do, pick up where they left off just like old friends do. They were scattered like the clutter under our feet, then clicked together like perfect little puzzle pieces. Through all the rude & crude, under all the noises & voices, inside all the motion & emotion, over all the laughter & quiet after, we could hear Dad's voice (Kenny imitates it so well). We could feel his peaceful pleased presence & we knew he was glad to be (somehow literally) above the fray, smiling on our irreverent reverence. Approving & glad that, even so soon without him, the laughter will continue to be the bond that keeps our family alive.