Thanksgiving

          I don’t like Thanksgiving, the forced feasting, the mandated

excess. 

I’ve written tirades against it for years. After all, this year will be my 61^st third-Thursday-in-November, and although I don’t remember all of them, the memories that come to mind generally feature someone getting embarrassingly drunk, arguments, break ups, stomach aches, greasy pots and pans to clean up afterwards.  And even if my personal day is pleasant, there’s the clogged grocery aisles, travel mayhem, too much TV, radio and newspaper coverage on how to cook a turkey, that I just want it to be over with.  But wait! The next day is Black Friday which ushers in the Shopping Season.  Yuck and double yuck.

          So, I’m going to share a poem about one Thanksgiving that was really wonderful: the time my entire family came from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Coarsegold, the second year John and I were married.  Here it is.

THANKSGIVING 1994

Thirty-five years ago we all fit snugly in

one small blue Mercedes that took us through

the drizzly continent of Europe

where we each got sick

and had to take odd local remedies

poultices, mustard packs, grated apples

small blue pills.

Now we are in two cars:

my mother, father and I share the Ford Explorer

with my husband who smoothly drives these mountain roads

so we can admire the autumn hues.

My grown niece follows in her red BMW

with her half-sister and my sister in back

and her boyfriend beside her, fiddling with the radio.

When we get to Nelder Grove it’s cold enough for gloves

but my sister is comfortable in purple zories.

She has no problem with the needle-strewn path.

“This is nice!” she whispers in the shady forest.

I wish she could carry the stillness with her

back to San Francisco and the noisy neighborhood where she lives.

Lauren up ahead does pirouettes in army fatigues.

Delicate fourteen-year-old fingertips the only indication

that a young girl resides in those oversize clothes.

My father, the atheist, all in white

            spotless!

says “It’s spiritual here, like a cathedral.”

The sheer age of the giant sequoias impresses him

not to mention their size.

And mother, who at seventy-three is still girlish

with her perky hair and springy gait, is thrilled

that the family is actually doing something together.

Later, at dinner, I pretend not to hear

when she hugs my husband and says,

“We love our son-in-law!” For I am the catalyst

who has coaxed my family from their coastal homes

to journey to the mountains and sleep in alien beds.

Soon my niece and her boyfriend appear

weaving and bumping into one another, newly in love.

I go from person to person, chatty, non-confrontational,

the preceding week’s hysteria now past.

We are all better for being with trees.

We are soothed and renewed,

surprised by our delight:

this is our clan.