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.