Family Ties: What We Talked About At Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, my son brought home the most delightful girlfriend.  I’m so pleased that he loves us enough to share her.  They cuddled and cooed all weekend. 

He hummed a happy song every morning as he made his coffee.  I’m usually the first one up, and sit in the relative quiet with my laptop and play.  In the past, he'd groan a hello and head outside for his breakfast cigarette.  No longer.  He's quit smoking, and his "Good Morning!" is electric.  The network news is usually on in the background, and never failed to spark conversation.

These are some of the things we discussed:

1. Social workers burning out because of onerous rules imposed from above that prevent them from actually helping people.
2. Obama being a tool of the capitalist regime.
3. Thomas Edison stealing patents and being an all-round scumbag.
4. The divide between the ultra-wealthy in America and everyone else widening.
5. The Vietnam War ending because the Viet Cong wouldn’t give up.
6. The military cover-up of rape of female enlistees and civilians by American combatants.
7. Obama reneging on his promise to get us out of Afghanistan.
8. America kowtowing to Israel.
9. My objections to being called old-fashioned for quoting, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” 
10. The American government doesn’t really want to capture Osama bin Laden; he’s a red herring, and most likely already dead.
11. Local government control is better than big government.
12. There is no longer a middle class in America.
13. Every American should have access to quality healthcare.
14. People talk about their pets in order to avoid substantive conversations with their fellow citizens.
15. Thomas Edison arranged to have an already doomed circus elephant electrocuted.  His only objection was that he preferred to say the elephant was “Westinghoused.”
16.  A college education doesn’t mean much anymore in terms of getting meaningful employment.
17. Employers don’t want employees who think.  This might lead to asking for benefits.
18. Not calling me old-fashioned.
19. Using the term “mentally ill” rather than crazy when referring to the person heading toward you on the sidewalk who is gesturing widely and talking loudly, and who has no visible Bluetooth.
20. Addressing the question of whether pc terms help make society better.
21. Transgender issues: can a female personality trapped inside a man, or a male personality trapped inside a woman ever be allowed free expression and acceptance without having to resort to surgery?
22. Are compassion and pity the same thing?
23. Monogamy as a social construct to control property.
24. Living outside the grid.
25. The overuse, misuse and abuse of the word “like.”
26. The French Revolution being ill devised since it led to Napoleon.
27. Tours of Israel where you’re shown only what they want you to see.  They don’t want you to see any Palestinians.
28. The American tax rate for the wealthiest citizens was 90% during WWII; been sliding down ever since.
29. The traditional who, what, when & where of journalism has been replaced by opinion in the guise of real news. 
30. Democracy has failed in America.  People feel powerless and disenfranchised.
31. Blackwater runs our military drones, not the military.
32. World hunger could be ended with under $50 billion.
33. Blood diamonds, Congo gold, and human rights violations to make a few men rich in the world.
34. P.O.C.'s are people of color.  I'm a diluted one of those.
    
35. Patience comes with experience, not with age.
36. The importance of never referring to me as old-fashioned.
    

Thanksgiving day was sunny and we walked to a local deli for brunch.  Dinner was later than I'd planned, but everyone pitched in and it was delicious.  The conversation was scintillating, and everyone pitched into that, too.  We didn't agree on everything.  Often, we needed to define and parse our terms to discover how close we were in our feelings about the world.

I felt like we were in a Norman Rockwell painting, a really radical one, where the family loves fiercely - each other, their words, their ideas for their country.

Notes From a Marriage: Micro fiction

LOL

I often think of the day you were so disagreeable and marched into the rain. I followed behind and did not get drenched when the cab sped by.

Buick Sundays

Sundays were always special because mom didn't work on that day.  She was tired from six straight 10-hour nights of waiting on tables.  No one could blame her if she didn't feel like cooking, cleaning or driving.  She'd let me drive the old Buick my Grandpa had given us, and by old I mean made of steel and without power steering.  Driving to Louie's Drive-In to pick up tamales and comic books was my job.  I was twelve and very responsible, but in my mother's mind I think that meant I was thirty-two.

It was fall in Santa Fe, a frosty nip in the air, but no snow on the ground.  My brother was only five and stayed with Mom and was totally not my responsibility for that one day. Everyone stayed inside, but my hangout on Sunday was the Buick I'd managed to park safely in our narrow driveway (there was a telephone pole planted right in the middle of the entrance).  I made the car cozy with pillows and a comforter.  It took on a greenhouse effect with all that New Mexican sunshine filtered and magnified through the windows.  I left them cracked, and the scent of pine and aspen wafting down from the Sangre de Cristos was a welcome counterbalance in my little hothouse.

Stuffed with spicy tamales, I'd snuggle down and read Superman, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Tales From Beyond, and something called Classics, which was a retelling of stories like Romeo & Juliet in graphic form. When I'd finish my series, I'd take them inside and exchange with Mom who'd been reading Batman, or Silver Surfer. We were getting along in those days.

That night Mom might cook a one-dish meal like macaroni made with Velveeta Cheese. The nights were cold, but we were warm and full.  Mom sometimes sang and danced when she cooked.  She teased and complemented me.   We laughed and I remember distinct happiness.  On Sunday nights, I went off to bed and read some more, only books this time, and the house was quiet.   I was fed on multiple levels.

Mom began to come home late.  When you get off at 3 a.m. late is arriving home at dawn.  I was worried, upset, angry . . . and curious.  I began to wake up in the middle of the night and wait for her.  She was full of excuses:  she'd gone out with the girls for breakfast; there was an after work party; her car broke down; her girlfriend's car broke down.  I was furious and jealous and possessive, and suspected sex was happening, but only in an amorphous, nonverbal way that made me afraid of losing my mother.

I was afraid of a lot of stuff in those days.  I was almost thirteen and hadn't yet started my period.  Every one of my girlfriends had breasts and had been menstruating practically since birth.  They were short and curvy and cute, and I was not.  Mom and I began to fight everyday, and I missed a lot of school because I overslept.  My mornings had always been spent alone because she and my brother slept late, but now I learned that she habitually peeked into my room on the way to the bathroom.  This was our closest connection.

"Aren't you going to school?"  I wanted her to make me go, but Mom couldn't even make herself come home after work.  On some days, she didn’t make it home at all.  The Sunday I gouged out a hunk of my thigh in a bicycle accident I needed stitches, but didn’t tell Mom about it when she finally came home.  She didn’t notice anything until years later when she asked about the huge scar on my thigh. 

I passed thirteen and we fought and I challenged her and we fought some more.  I was angry all the time and mean to my little brother.  On Sundays Mom was exhausted and withdrawn.  She cooked, but there was no laughter.  I stopped reading comics in the Buick, but read Dostoyevsky by the light of a little portable electric heater bedside until Mom’s car entered the driveway.  I’d quickly shut my book and pretend to be asleep.  We didn’t talk until I decided to go live with my Dad in Texas, and then I slept with her and my brother every night until the day arrived for me to leave.  It was my last belonging.

For the year that I was gone, we remained close.  Her letters were long and full of love and trivia.  When she called long distance, she’d ask if I wanted to talk to my dog and cat.  Long distance was expensive in those days and the gesture meant a lot to me.  She was home, she was family, and my dad and his new wife were not.

I returned to New Mexico carrying the secret Mom had shared with me in her last telephone call: I now had a baby sister.  Dad squeezed his Caddy between the telephone pole and the wall and made it down our narrow drive.  Before he’d turned off the motor, I’d jumped out and entered my mother’s waiting arms.  She looked tired and ill.  She’d had to stop waitressing as her pregnancy advanced, and had taken a babysitting job for a family that lived in a trailer park on the outskirts of Santa Fe.  There was a real outdoor swimming pool there, and my brother and I swam everyday under our mother’s watchful eye. 

My dad wept when he found out about my sister.  He begged me to return to Texas with him and warned me about the bad boys who would swarm all over me when they found out about Mom.  He frightened me, but not enough to endure my stepmother again.  Winter and high school and bad boys were months away.  Mom was resting and getting well and eventually she’d return to night work.  In the meantime, those days at the trailer park pool were like a summer full of Buick Sundays.