Posted By Daisy on November 24, 2010

It is Thanksgiving tomorrow, and  I’m not really in the mood to write about gratitude.  It’s not that I’m not grateful for things — I am.  I just don’t like what gratitude has come to mean, particularly in the context of teaching our kids.  More often than not, gratitude seems to boil down to one of two things.  It can be an indenture, as in: “You ought to be grateful for everything that I do for you,” or it can be a very creepy competitive sport, as in: “Be grateful that YOU are not THEM.”  Neither of those is in keeping with what I’d like to think the spirit of Thanksgiving (or the mythology of it, anyway) is all about.

I’d rather focus on togetherness.  For starters, that means family.  I happen to like my family.  No, really.  I don’t just love them, I enjoy spending time with them, I would want them at my dinner parties, I’d get my feelings hurt if they didn’t want me to sit with them at the lunch table.  That said, we’re a weird bunch.  (THAT said, who isn’t?  There would be no great books, plays or movies to which we all are drawn if most families were normal.)  Our particular brand of weirdness tilts in the direction of Tennessee Williams, with a splash of heathenism.  My parents are here, having made the 7 hour drive from the mountains of North Carolina, armed with plenty of side dishes, and Amy Sedaris‘ latest book. Last night my father found it amusing to hide my mother’s pajamas, and then we all settled in with scotch and tuna melts for Dancing With the Stars.  My brother will arrive at at unknown time today via the ever-unpredictable Chinatown bus.  While I was prepared to have everything catered, my brother insisted that our condo needed to smell like a turkey.  If we would brine it, he would cook it.   You’ll recall he is a master with pies, so I suggested a pumpkin pie, as the Bear has been asking about this carving business (have you surmised I am not very domestic?)  He agreed, but requested that I procure in particular a “cheese pumpkin.”  With the little guy in tow, our grocer asserted that there was no such vegetable, and suggested that perhaps my urchin had made it up.  Hence my brother will have to take the Bear shopping today and show him what distinguishes a “cheese pumpkin” from all the rest.  (I’ll try to get back to you on that, if any of you are interested.)

My husband’s family is a whole ‘nother kind of weird.  Because they are not my blood kin, it would be tacky for me to divulge all their ideosyncrasies, but I can tell you this much.  Both his parents were born in southeast Asia, but my husband has been a Virginian pretty much his entire life, and went to a solidly Southern university, a solidly Southern law school, and a London post-post-graduate program, making him….hard to pin down.  An overeducated trilingual good ole boy, maybe?  I dunno.  Combine these two families ,and the Bear will grow up with plenty to talk about, if he is so inclined.

And now for the magic that is the United States.  My little Southern Gothic Hapa, growing up near our nation’s capital, doesn’t even register as mildly unusual.  Perhaps if we were in a different part of the country I’d feel differently, but here he’s just one among many, many three year olds with family histories that would take multiple pages and a globe to trace.  THAT, for me, is the meaning of the uniquely American holiday that is Thanksgiving.

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