Remembering Thanksgiving

DEARBORN, MICHIGAN
Thanksgiving 1970s

What I remember most about Thanksgiving is this: sitting outside on the chilly cement steps in the darkness, alone in the dark, in the cold. I remember the feeling of not being missed.

Thanksgivings were like that: the little presence you had in the world, that you might have acquired by complaining about the lack of heat in the back seat of the car would vanish when you crossed the threshold into your cousin’s house. In the car, you had a voice, even if you knew the heat would never be turned up; it was warm enough in the front and that is all that mattered. In the car, mostly, there was silence, so it was easy to think your own thoughts, to forget you were sitting in a miserable bubble speeding an hour and a half through the fields to a place you did not want to be but had no choice. You had your own place to sit in the car, and your own silence, and if you dared, an insignificant hopeless opinion about the world around you. The air was cold. Thanksgivings were always cold.

At first, you’d bring your flute, imagining shining eyes of relatives upon you and applause for making it through Mary Had a Little Lamb and Red River Valley. But the room would empty as you played, any room would become empty no matter where you set up the silver music stand. Your cousin plays the violin, and well, according to rumor. She is in an orchestra somewhere. No one has ever heard her play. You would like to ask her to play just for you, but even then you sense she is barely holding back a torrent of hurt; you sense that this might cause an irreparable crack in the dam. And so you put away your flute and never bring it again. The next year, no one asks if you still play.

The adults sit in the basement at folding tables and you are not welcome to go down there. If they hear your feet on the stairs, you will be faced, when you reach the bottom, with thousands of hostile eyes. And silence, that closed-down silence that tells you they are waiting for you to leave. Sometimes you are afraid to go down to eat; you are always the last one down the stairs and the rolls are getting cold. You feel in your heart that if someone would just say grace then the butter would still melt, even on the rolls, but people discuss this and with the discussing, the food gets colder, and someone, then everyone, simply starts eating. You go upstairs before dessert.

The TV is on in the den upstairs and every year you are surprised to see your cousin’s husband watching war. He loves war, especially World War II. He has dozens of books on the shelves across from the TV, all with swastikas on the back. He had models of tanks for the desert and tanks for tearing ruts across the European countryside. You think perhaps he might wish to be a Nazi; his feet and legs look like they wear tall shiny boots with heels that click together when you throw your arm out in a salute. He owns a dog, an enormous German shepherd named Schultz. You are afraid of this man and also his dog.

It is the dog that sends you outside, finally, out into the freezing air without a coat. You are tremendously allergic to dogs and by now your nose is running without stopping and is getting chapped, and you sneeze ten times in a row every few minutes, and your lungs are squeezed for air. So you go outside to the steps to breathe. The cold air will slow the mucus; you will stay outdoors until your last Kleenex is soggy. Sometimes there are stars in the sky, hard points of harsh light, too sharp to be dulled by the suburban night. Sometimes there is snow on the ground. Always you feel the pull, a sense of spinning so strong that if you moved from the steps, you would be flung to the door of a neighbor, any neighbor, as long as they would notice your red nose and watery eyes and draw you into the golden light you see behind their steamy picture windows. You pretend your eyes are wet because of the allergy. You pretend you are content and warm. You pretend someone wonders where you are and is putting on their coat to join you on the steps. You pretend until the damp tissue numbs your fingers. And then you go back inside.

You are too sick to notice the rest of the evening. You might go back outside or you might sit motionless in a corner. Movement makes your nose drip worse so you concentrate on stillness. You watch people leave but no one else seems to see them go. You wonder if anyone notices they have vanished and think that they do not, until a plate is discovered left behind. Eventually you will also go, mumbling a congested goodbye. Thanksgiving is over and the back seat of the car is cold.