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We’ve got about an inch of snow on the ground. It may be the first snowy Turkey Day that I remember here in Missouri. In Indiana where I grew up snow was more the rule, than the exception.
Jonathon’s step-father, Art, is doing the cooking. He’s a very good cook. He’s borrowing our kitchen and our dining room. But I still don’t have to cook, and neither does Jonathon. Mary and Art are coming a little early to do the last minute cooking thing. They are going to be moving up closer to us soon. One of the pluses for that is we’ll get to have more of Art’s cooking. Jonathon still counts loosing Art’s meals as one of the downsides of leaving home. Darla and her family are coming. It’s so nice to enjoy the people you work with enough to want to see them on days when you don’t have to. Very cool. Richard will be over, and Andrew, Jon’s long time bud, will be over after work. Greg is already here, having been the only one who had to fly in out of state. Great Grandma Helen will also be joining us. I added this paragraph after I’d read the rest of this blog over. I feel good after writing this. I will be seeing only people I like, love, and enjoy today. Read the rest of the blog for some of my other feelings on this joyous holiday.
When I married for the first time I could cook a turkey or ham dinner for forty to sixty people, but I couldn’t fry a hamburger or boil soup. How was this possible? My grandmother started out having big family dinners, as she got older and less able to lift and carry a twenty pound turkey, and heavy dishes, I took over. I did the cakes, the meat, some of the vegetables. Granny did green beans (I have yet to make them taste as good as hers, though I’ve watched her make them a thousand times), macaroni salad (again I can’t duplicate it), a cherry desert that I never cared for, but that the rest of the family loved. The pumpkin pie we took turns on, or bought. But I was the one who did the meat, frankly because it was heavy for her. To this day I’m not sure the family understood how much I did to make “Granny’s Thanksgiving Dinner” possible. Sometimes it’s hard for people to realize how fragile a person is getting. Maybe they didn’t want to see it, or maybe Granny and I had worked out a way to hide it. Who knows. Happy thoughts Laurell, happy thoughts.
Sasquatch is lying infront of my keyboard, his upper body on one of my arms. He’ll actually sleep this way. I find it very comforting. I think I will always want at least one dog small enough to be my desk buddy. Pippin did it as a puppy, but he just out grew the space. He does take over my lap if Sasquatch doesn’t get there first sometimes. Pip’s head weighs almost as much as Sas’s entire body. Pip is downstairs with Jon, Trinity, and Greg. Uncle Greg for Trin. Family of choice, rather than blood. Though interestingly Jon and he look enough alike that we’ve had people ask, or assume that they’re brothers. Actually Greg was my friend before he was Jon’s. Just as Jon brought Richard into the marriage, I brought Greg. It’s been one of the cool things about our marriage that our friends like eachother. So often in marriage people seem to have to give up their friends, give up who they are. A good marriage makes you more of who you truly are, not less. Having real trouble holding onto those happy thoughts today.
I did not want to go to Indiana and do thanksgiving. So I didn’t go. But I feel guilty about it. I am hoping the book will be done before Christmas so I can go around then. But don’t even get me started on how I’m doing twenty plus pages a day, striking off points on my outline, and still am hundreds of pages out from the end. Very discouraging.
Today makes me want to do the book where Anita goes home to her family for thanksgiving. It makes me want to say all the things I think, or feel, about those family obligations that can be both wonderful and suffocating. Those familial demands, that are truly demands, not requests, unless you police your emotional boundaries with high powered rifles, and attack dogs. But still the guilt sneaks past, so you’re left damned if you go, and damned if you don’t.
To all of you that find Thanksgiving with your family a blessing, untouched by confusion, my most sincere wish for a very happy day. To the rest of us, who find it both a blessing and a curse to be forced to be in close proximity to our blood relatives, my sympathies.
You walk in the door of that house where you were raised, and find that no matter how much therapy you’ve had, that you’re married, and grown, and have children of your own, a life, a job, everything that makes you who you are now, just falls away. Unless you fight it tooth and nail, the house, the memories, the people suck you back into issues that are old, and painful, and never ending. Old grievances that people have against eachother. Old stories that were horrible the first time. Stories about how Papa beat Granny for twenty years, how he almost killed her a couple of times. How he abused the children mostly emotionally, but some physically. The memories of the physical abuse I witnessed as a child. Not a lot, but enough. I am by nature a person that remembers the negative before the positive. I have worked for years to be as positive as I am. My daughter is a very positive person, and I worked so hard to try and not be negative around her. I’ve succeeded overall, but the inside of my head where she cannot see is still a very dark place.
I realize that you, the readers, get to see that dark place. Not all of it, but some of it. As I strip the layers off my issues, and look at them naked and raw, I realize more and more why I write what I write. I hate knowing that much about my own motives. It leaves me feeling squeamish and almost embarrassed. Like doing therapy in public. Anita has some of my issues, but not all, and she’s managed to find her own issues that I don’t even share. Is that the proof of how real she is, that she’s found new and different ways to be damaged? Merry, I wanted someone who didn’t have a lot of my hang-ups. She pushes me so far outside my comfort zone sometimes, that it is exhausting. Maybe that’s what’s up with this book. So much of it pushes me outside my safe zones. My subconscious is always doing that, racing ahead of where I am in therapy, giving me subject matter that forces me to work my issues. My muse seems intent on my getting healthy, whether I like it or not.
My apologies that I can’t hold onto the happy thoughts today. I’m going to get Jon to look at this and see if it’s too dark, or too personal to go up on the blog. I’m going to either walk the dogs, get on the tread mill, or watch a feel-good movie. Gotta drag my butt out of the dumps before I get stuck there. The holidays, ho, ho, freaking, ho.