My Favorite Thanksgiving Memories, Served With Sides of Relaxation and Revenge

To be honest, holidays aren't my favorite thing. I put on my happy face in public and try to keep my grinchy side tucked in tight, but sometimes I just can't help myself. My lack of enthusiasm leaks out through holes I can't plug fast enough. Luckily, my family doesn't hold this against me.

It isn't about not having thankfulness, or joy or religious enthusiasm, it is just DANG - I don't have memories of childhood holiday perfection. If you had a generally crappy childhood, it wasn't magically better just because it was Jesus's birthday, or the Bicentennial of 1976 or whatever.  Holidays just meant there was no escape from whatever was going on at home. Yippee. As an adult, I slowly came to the realization that holiday fun = a hell of a lot of work, time and money, especially as the mom who was supposed to cook, clean and make the magic happen.  Bahumbug. I just want to sit down and read a good book.

In light of Thanksgiving happening this week, I want to share with you my two favorite memories of Thanksgiving past:

 TV Dinner Heaven

 At my adoptive family's home, Thanksgiving was a week long ordeal of Virginia buying food, preparing food, cooking food and in-between her once-a-year activity in the kitchen, yelling at us kids to clean up the mess after her. When she cooked, she used every pot, pan, bowl and spoon in the kitchen and whichever unfortunate child caught her attention (usually me or my sister Emelia) would be ordered to spend all day in the kitchen with her, washing dishes as she used them. It was a dreadful job, made only worse by never knowing what Virginia was going to be crabby about at any given moment. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner were the two times a year the good dishes came out and the table was set with crystal goblets, irreplaceable china and real silverware that had to be polished before use. After the meal, every piece had to be carefully hand washed and stored in the china hutch. Heaven help the poor soul who broke or chipped a dish! I  don't recall any of us children making that fatal mistake.There was nothing I looked forward to about Thanksgiving.

That all changed the year that life fell apart for the Spencer's. For whatever reason, our family had to move out of one rental house and into another over Thanksgiving weekend. It wasn't our typical organized kind of move. It was more like hurry up and throw that box in the truck, we are outta here sort of thing. I had learned to not ask questions, so whatever. All that mattered to me was, "What about Thanksgiving?" I couldn't see how we could possibly do the typical week of  Thanksgiving torture with all our dishes in boxes. I didn't dare breathe a word of my thoughts, I just waited to see what would happen. Praise be - God does answer prayers because for the first time in my adopted life, we had no Thanksgiving preparation. Just packing, loading and unloading truck loads of household goods. Thanksgiving day arrived with us sitting in the living room on unopened boxes, nary a proper silver fork in sight.

At lunch time, Harley plugged in the stove and turned it on. Virginia had planned ahead and had purchased a stack of Swanson frozen turkey tv dinners, which were unceremoniously heated up in the oven. Oh the smells! Turkey gravy, mashed potatoes and cherry cobbler all mixed together, filling our new rental house with warm gooey goodness that didn't require me to stand at the sink, dodging scalding pots and barbed tongues. Yay for Swanson! The greatest thing ever invented in my short 13 year-old life, was the frozen turkey dinner that required no preparation and no clean up on my part.
I ate my tv dinner with quiet satisfaction, thinking it tasted better than anything I'd ever eaten. No holiday had been as relaxing and uneventful as that one and I enjoyed every minute of it.

  The Thanksgiving My Son-in-Law Came to Visit

 Fast forward 33 years. I was all grown up, with grown children of my own. My daughter had been married for just under a year to a guy that I repeatedly reminded myself that I although I didn't care for him, my daughter did. She was bringing him home to enjoy a long Thanksgiving weekend with the rest of our family. In the name of supporting my offspring, I sucked up my irritation and got on with the business of Thanksgiving.

 I was cooking away in the kitchen when my son-in-law called me to the living room. He wanted to play his video games with me. He had already worn out every other member of the family with his non-stop 24-7 obsession with video games and it was finally my turn to deal with him. The food was at a place where I could let it go for a bit, so I took up his challenge. He carefully demonstrated how to use the game controllers to make the characters on the screen move. The first game we played was fencing. He made a big show of explaining sparring, jabbing and other fencing moves. I didn't pay an ounce of attention to his instruction. I had no intention of being a real contender with his silly video game. I'd never seriously played video games in my life and had no interest in starting now. My goal was to lose as quickly as possible so I could get back to the comfort of my kitchen, where no one bothered me with stupid things like dumb video games. 

When the game began, I started thrusting the game controller at the tv screen as fast as possible with no regard to form or technique. My son-in-law made an alarmed squeaking noise as he started to correct me, but then he noticed I had killed him. He quit paying attention to me and concentrated on his game. In less than 10 minutes, I fenced him to death on every level of his video game. He was NOT happy. He was a military dude with top-security clearance in his field, and his chubby, ignorant mother-in-law whooped him good. I repeated the same thing with my son-in-laws boxing game. Within another 10 minutes, I boxed him to knockout on every level of his video game. He started to complain that I had cheated, but was silenced by the loud laughter of everyone else.

I pretended to be nonchalant, like I knew all along I was going to win. I am super cool like that. In reality, I didn't even know how to turn his game on, let alone how to win. I just wanted it over. My son-in-law's naturally occurring bravado was taken down a notch and we all enjoyed a peaceful Thanksgiving afternoon without testosterone-filled competitiveness. It was delightful.

The next morning I was so sore from the previous day's exertions I could barely lift my arms to dress myself. I had used muscles I didn't even know existed and they were not graceful in their introduction to the rest of my body. I spent the rest of the weekend in a pain med haze and it was so worth it.
A few years later when my son-in-law's lack of character came to the full light of day, I stood next to my daughter in the courthouse while their marriage was dissolved. I took great satisfaction in remembering that although he was over 6 feet tall and cut an imposing figure, I wiped the floor with him the first Thanksgiving weekend we had together. I was the only person who was undefeated against him.

I love the holidays. Don't you?