Football game white noise from the wood-paneled den. The curling perfume of dinner rolls in the oven. Dad wears an apron and wields the electric carving knife over a golden hump of overcooked turkey. Again we gather at the big family table for Thanksgiving.
We are seven Kellys and a shaggy assortment of strays—South American exchange students, a foster child or two, my brother’s friend Jack who ran away from home, and my mom’s taekwondo instructor, who breaches protocol when he brings kimchi as his addition to the menu.
Standard interpretations of the holiday meal crowd the tabletop: sweet potatoes ruffled with miniature marshmallows, overcooked green beans, potatoes mashed into chalky submission and a gelatinous log of cranberry sauce branded by the ribbing of its tin can. This is the fourth Thursday in November from my childhood, my adolescence, my early 20s. It is my normal.
Where has all the normal gone?
Pass the gravy. Dark meat or white? The Colts score another touchdown. We eat.
My younger brothers make fart noises. The older kids gulp their holiday exemption—a glass of Cold Duck sparkling wine. We talk over one another and slide into dutiful gluttony. We eat seconds. We tell stories about our weird relatives.
Pumpkin and pecan pie: We eat even more.
After about 45 minutes, the tryptophan kicks in. One by one, as if in a zombie trance, we rise from the table, walk into the living room, unzip our pants, and lie on the floor. We lie on our backs and groan, basting in our delicious agony. The elastic waistband of our underpants cannot contain our white bellies as they rise and fall.
They rise and they fall.
I don’t know how the post-meal, open-pants part of our holiday began, but it held fast as a ritual and inscribed itself into our family folklore.
I could use a little soothing ritual these days, a spell of unzipping and lying still. I could use some pie, some fart noises and a cold brace of sparkling anything. And then I could use help digesting the recent election.
In the aftermath of Nov. 8, I’m left inert and infuriated. My disbelief narcotizes. I am sickened by my alienation and nonplussed at my inability to clearly see the country that I call my own. I read calls for transcendence and protest. I hear renewed pledges for participation in the machinery of working democracy. But I have yet to urge forth my better self. Or much of a self at all.
It is Thanksgiving week. My thoughts churn and skitter, and I wait to alight on what it is I want to say. For a few hours I eddy in Thanksgiving memories. In the past few weeks I haven’t been able to find much to be thankful for, but my memories unleash a gush of gratitude, and I take a baby step. I can do this. I can feel thankful. And I am: I am thankful for the pale, full and jiggly bellies of my family. I am thankful for zippers on pants.
I am thankful that I am not a turkey. The National Turkey Federation (yes, this is a real thing, and to my shattering disbelief, so is a Donald Trump presidency), estimates that about 46 million turkeys will give their lives this year to be the centerpieces of the traditional North American Thanksgiving meal. So there is that, right?
I am also thankful for Abraham Lincoln, a thinking man clouded by depression and illuminated by genius. A poet who became president and enlarged the scope and spirit of our nation. I am thankful for Abe’s commitment to jaunty haberdashery, for his Emancipation Proclamation that put into motion our country’s commitment to end slavery, and for his declaration 153 years ago that made Thanksgiving a national holiday.
I am certain that I will come around to more thankfulness. I’m unsure when, but I am not the timekeeper for that tidal chart. I first need to move through the stages of grief to make my way to the liberating vantage point of acceptance. And then I will launch into action, doing what I can and must to create and live in a just, educated and valiant country. I’ll rise from the floor, zip up my pants and carry on. I will carry on. And so, I hope, shall we all.
