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Being Thankful... Not!
Being Thankful... Not!
By Philip Bender
Ugh. It’s getting to be that time of year again – the dreaded holiday season. And the first major family stress-fest out of the chute is Thanksgiving.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the holidays · at first. But then I get past the warm memories of holidays past – their sights and smells and flavors – and remember that there are functional issues to be dealt with. And family.
I am a traditionalist. I like family rituals and holiday traditions. It was always my job to help Mom polish the silver, iron the linens and set the holiday table (and she had the nerve to say “We had no idea!” when I came out – please!). My brother and I could also count on being forced to play holiday music on the Wurlitzer organ in the living room to entertain the slightly batty elderly aunt from out of town who always exclaimed that we were organ prodigies.
Now that I am an adult, however, I have new traditions – at least with my partner Brian’s local family members.
We usually host Thanksgiving at our home in Bakersfield, his sister in Morrisville hosts Christmas Eve, and his mother, also in Morrisville, hosts Christmas Day. Last year, this was further expanded by the addition of our friends, a wonderful gay couple – also residents of Morrisville – who know the rest of the family through a variety of work and social relationships, and who hosted the “after-the-mother’s-hosted-cocktail-event-Christmas-Day-dinner.” The picture was made complete with the addition of out-of-town homosexuals who were brought in especially for the event.
Brian’s two visiting siblings – there are a total of six, they being a good Irish Catholic family and all – were stunned and amazed to find their rather staunch Catholic parents celebrating the Lord’s birthday at the epicenter of the Morrisville gay holiday social whirl. It was beautiful and emotionally satisfying in its execution – Brian’s 83-year-old aunt is still talking about it – but I was too exhausted to enjoy it.
See, there is this strange and frightening thing that happens with my in-laws. In times of stress (occasioned by the act of two or more of them trying to do something that requires actual commitment and planning), they lapse into some kind of silent, psychic mode of communication that excludes everyone not related to them by blood.
There are no verbal discussions or commitments, no plans spoken aloud. They simply lapse into silence and make their own internal decisions about how the holidays will be handled. They assume that the other family members’ psychic antennae will pick up these decisions, coordinate their decisions to complement them, and beam the updated holiday calendar back out to each other so that there is perfect coordination, harmony and peace on earth for all mankind.
It is at this point that the poor witless devils who have actually chosen to become a part of the family begin making extra pilgrimages to church, the therapist, and/or the liquor store.
This year, to make it even more interesting and tantalizingly more stressful, the younger brother from Manhattan, who is in the process of coming out to the family, wants to bring “the boyfriend” up for Thanksgiving to introduce him to the family.
Oy vey.
Now this is potentially wonderful news – but only if you are not related to him. And we don’t like either of them.
Okay – I haven’t met the boyfriend yet but I have been informed by my stalwart and steadfast life-partner and helpmate of twelve years, who has met the boyfriend, that the boyfriend is unpleasant, pretentious, condescending and just a downright odious awful bore.
Add to this the fact that the brother is a neurotic bundle of emotional dysfunction who gets on my last good nerve in record-breaking time and you have a recipe for an even more miserable family holiday than usual. And in my house, no less.
And, although the imposition has only been hinted at by this bundle of emotional damage – remember, my psychic antenna is not picking this up – these queer newlyweds think they’re going to stay at our house for the four-day weekend.
Oh, hell no!
I have announced to my partner that we are not doing this. Sometimes the best way to maintain family relationships is to just run the hell away from them, screaming and waving your arms – shedding anything that could possibly slow down your escape. Like the citizens of Tokyo in a Godzilla film.
It’s important to know that for nine years Brian’s other sister in California lived within maximum holiday-damage distance of us prior to our relocating to Vermont. Those nine years of this same kind of massively tense holiday unspoken expectation and discord from that proximity have scarred my psyche and battered the very core of my holiday spirit. We eventually reached a point where the prospect of holiday entertaining was as attractive as receiving an invitation to appear on a Jerry Springer’s “I Have a Surprise for You” episode.
I stand by my “We are not doing this” declaration.
Fortunately, my own family lives too far away to visit easily and my parents and I celebrate the holidays together only every couple of years. In between we exchange gifts, calls and cards. On those rare occasions when we do get together, we do very well for the first few days and then – usually on about the fourth day – we all begin to count the hours until they can go to the airport.
So this Thanksgiving, we are choosing the path of least resistance. We are visiting our elderly friend Jane in New York. We will have a very pleasant Thanksgiving, we will talk and laugh, and we will very likely get Jane liquored up just because it’s a lot of fun. And it will be the perfect family holiday – a holiday free from drama, emotional baggage and family dysfunction.
We discovered a long time ago that family doesn’t have to be related. Some of our best family holidays have been those not burdened with the presence of a single blood relation.
And this Thanksgiving, Brian and I will be very thankful: thankful for friends, thankful for good health, and thankful for another year of being together and in love.
And most of all, we will be thankful that maybe – just maybe – we’re beginning a new and more satisfying holiday family tradition.
Philip Bender lives in an ancient farmhouse in Bakersfield with his partner, three dogs, and four cats, none of whom will get turkey leftovers this year.