Oh Yeah...Thanksgiving

"I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." ~ Wendell Berry

On Friday, my therapist and I were discussing how I keep avoiding the knowledge that Thanksgiving is imminent.  I used to be Ms. Traditional Thanksgiving to make up for all the really horrific ones I had as a kid.  I not only cooked a turkey, but baked fresh bread and made pies with homemade crust.  I lit candles and looked fabulous while we ate.  Most people who know me now find it hard to believe I was ever that way.  That's just because it's more comfortable  to reduce others to the lowest common denominator so we don't have to embrace complexity.  I am always at both ends of the spectrum.  I embody contradiction.  That's a hard, hard thing for people to understand, so I just let them rest in whatever (limited) understanding they have of me.  But I digress.

Miss G., the therapist, asked me when all of that changed.  I actually had to think a moment before I remembered...it was the year my dad killed himself.  That changed everything.  The first Thanksgiving, which came only about a month after he shot himself, I decided the only way I could get through it was to do everything differently.  We did Italian for Thanksgiving.  We did Chinese for Christmas.  My husband was out of town for both.

I gradually migrated back to a more traditional menu, but it's never been the same.  This year, I'm just so exhausted that, even though I keep making noises about bread and pies, it's next to inconceivable that any of that will actually happen.  My mom and I shopped for Thursday this past weekend and it was hard to even focus my mind on what we needed to get.  I'm not sure that's related to my father, but I suppose it could be.  I seem to be a bit stuck in cancer treatment mode. I was trying to remember where I was last year on Thanksgiving day and, as far as I can recall, I was getting infused with poison.  Fun times. 

All in all, the memories that currently go with Thanksgiving are difficult to face.  The memories from being a child at Thanksgiving may be, in their own way, much worse.  It's hard to quantify horrific. 

America held hostage day 1752

Bushism of the day:

"And I suspect that what you'll see, Toby, is there will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered.  Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses." ~talking to reporters along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, Gulfport, Mississippi, August 28, 2006