Thanksgiving Memory

Not such a good one. All about stuffing. All about the things we see as kids and how we know exactly the emotional temperature of the household and how our parents feel about one another.

Money was the coin of the realm. If you had money, you were the big guy. You were safe, people had to do what you said. People had to listen. People could be told what to do if you were the guy with the money. The guy with the expense account. The guy who picked up the check at the fancy business lunch in town, the day before Thanksgiving when the wives were home making the big family meal for the next day. Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, you had time to fuck your girlfriend and take the late train to Greenwich for the lovely family weekend.

Where did that come from? Well, wherever. I told you I don’t know where any of it comes from. I just write it down.

He did have girl friends – we all knew and all pretended it wasn’t happening – the delightful double whammy of childhood abandonment and simultaneously having your head fucked over with all the lies, all the pretending, having your pristine core knowledge, your gut feelings contradicted by adult words. Your innocent knowing and intuition betrayed. Everyone pretending they can’t hear the deafening noise of my mother’s anger and frustration, completely silent but louder than murderous thunder. She’s making stuffing.

So you pick. You want to be the guy downtown with the fancy car and the fun life and the pretty babe? Or do you want to be home at the stove burning stuffing? Stuffing it. And that’s all we got to see up close, all of us kids figuring these two parents knew something we didn’t know. Surely they must know how to live a life. What were they doing there otherwise? Weren’t they trying to show us something. Something about how the world worked? Something about how we would live in the world when we were their age?

Can you guess the writer ... try this link for a reminder.