Thankful

Well I knew it would come to this. It's 11:14, 46 minutes before this post is due. I've never been good at mastering the art of completing assignments early, and every teacher tells me that it's an essential thing to learn before my college years. Truth is, I was distracted today.

Here's why. My mom let me sleep late today. Last night she informed all of us that she would be waking us up promptly at 9 AM to help her cook and clean the house since Thanksgiving was being held at our house this year. I expected a frantic orchestra of pots and pans sometime around 8:15, but instead I woke up to a soft smiling face and familiar hands through my hair at 11:10. "Wake up sweety, it's Thanksgiving," was all my mom said, before she walked out the room and closed the door gently.

I stretched. I had slept for 11 hours which is longer than I can ever remember sleeping since the summer when it was normal to do those sorts of things. My brother and sister were asleep by the time I got home last night and zombied my way to my bed. This morning I attacked my sister in the pull out couch and jumped on my brother's back to say good morning. I don't know where I would be without them. Frank and I had always been close, and we haden't seen each other for a few months. I had seen Gina over the weekend, but there's something about all of us being home that makes a world of difference.

I don't use the term "all of us" lightly. We were hosting Thanksgiving for " all of us" and this is what "all of us" entailed. My mother, my brother, my sister, my aunt, and me. Just the five of us. There was no extra table extension needed to fit everybody. There was no need to search the hosue in a frantic looking for extra fine china to serve food on for everybody. There was no last minute scramble to get more food because there wouldn't be enough for everyone. We originally planned to sit around the T.V. with take out chinese food or some to-go burritoes from Taco of the Town. They had prior obligations, we couldn't blame them.

It wasn't always like this. Every year until I was 13 we would take the 6 hour drive to Rochester, New York and spend Thanksgiving with 30 relatives on my dad's side of the family. It was the warmest chaos that I've ever known. Everywhere I'd turn, there was a piece of me. If I looked behind me, I saw my eyes. To the left of me was my lips. Behind me was my nose. Everyone always said that I looked like my Aunt Donna's blast from the past. We were identical in every way from sense of humor, to laugh, to chin structure. The only thing that kept us from being twins was time, and even that had a hard time stopping us. I "looked like a Mobilio." I loved that.

I wasn't as close with my mom's side growing up. Her side doesn't have any cousins around my age, but my cousins on my Dad's side were just a few years older than me, and the five of us were inseperable. We would put on plays. They would last about 20 seconds because we were all too little to remember lines or format, but, still, we would have to gather every member of our huge family, every neighbor within a five mile raidus, and even random people we met at the Food Lion just to watch our groundbreaking performance. I remember seeing all of my Aunts and Uncles look down on our innocence with the look of unfiltered love painted on their faces.

I was the baby of the family. My mother and I almost died during my birth due to her developing ovarian cancer during my pregnancy. When she found out she was just going to her doctor for a normal baby check-up. When they performed the ultra-sound they discovered something else that, unlike a child, was not a promise of new life, but of a possible fatality. She was advised, no, ordered to terminate me upon discovering the cancer so that they would give her the proper treatment to survive. The medication would, undoubtedly, kill me, or else they would have to use less-effective treatment that was not garunteed to work, but still sure to harm me. She didn't waver, and told them no. Here I am, 17+ years later, healthy as can be. She is currently cancer free. It's a bond we share that I can not explain, but we look at each other and know.

I didn't even mind the 6 hour drive. It taught me patience, patience I would need very soon in my soon to be changed life. Most of those smiling faces and those warm hugs, and that feeling of teogetherness and community have not been a part of my life for almost 5 years now. Upon my parent's divorce, my father's half of the family, quite literally, divorced us as well.

I don't understand, even now that I have grown up so much more. I look at pictures and old home movies, and it doesn't make sense. I still see my eyes, my lips, my smile, my laugh, my small hands and my broad shoulders, my thick hair and my pale skin. They still share my blood, my name, and the title of "aunt" and "uncle" and "grandmother." Every day was a special day, and was treated as such. Birthdays involved a phone call from at least 6 at a time singing happy birthday. Report cards were rewarded with a card in the mail or an e-mail with fireworks writing "WAY TO GO" in the cyber night sky. I have stared at the phone every birthday since then expecting the sing-a-long that I looked forward to so much every year. I would record it on the answering machine and save it for months until my mother would complain that there was not enough tape left. I want to remember their off-key voices, and the laughter when one of them would stumble on their words. I loved that the best, because then I could hear all of them. But I also loved when all of them blended together to create and expression of love and thought.

I don't hear of either anymore. It's been 5 years since my last birthday symphony, since my last card in the mail, since our last gathering as a together family on such an important holiday. I hope they are well, I really do. I never want to divorce, but should that ever happen to me, I don't understand why that means that you stop being an aunt, a grandmother, an uncle, a family. Two people didn't get along anymore (one wasn't truthful), but does that mean that you quit on the children? Their faces while they watched me forget lines to Little Red Riding Hood seemed to send me promises of a love that would last forever. I wasn't the adult there, I was a child who was scared and afraid when her father drove away. Little did I know that I wouldn't see him for a good 3 years as well.

These years haven't always been kind to me. I lost half of my family, I lost contact and touch with the people that gave me these eyes, this smile. I don't want them to think I'm ungrateful. I want them to know I think of them every day. I hope they had a great day today, I really do. I want them to prosper and continue on and be happy. If that means handing out a smile or a pair of lips and moving on, then I guess I should be thankful to have even been given something at all...right?

So this Thanksgiving has happened twice before. Small, 5 people, always enough food on the same section on the counter. Very personal, no one else out of the conversation since we all shared the same one. We all ate at different paces. We don't go around in a circle like we used to and say what we are thankful for. "Grab a plate." And we do.

I look around at the family that stayed with me. Maybe it's because they're closer, or that I, as well as my brother and sister, announce and proclaim ourselves as my mother's child. Maybe it's because of the distance. I know I will never have another Thanksgiving like I did as a child, but the point is I did. Not everyone is that lucky. Maybe they were only a family to us because they had to be. They didn't hold us while we cried, or feel us shake when the tears ran dry. They didn't sit with us while we read the newspaper articles of the things my father was accused of doing to a girl in this very school of whom I knew. They weren't there for me when I held my father and felt him tremble at the touch of innocence after he spent his 3 days in jail.

My Aunt Risa was there. She was actually the one that sat me down and told me why my father wouldn't be coming home that night. She told me where he went, and why. She held me up when my feet buckled up underneath me, and when the fear sunk in when I learned that the entire town would soon know the exact details I was just told. My sister stayed home from school with me the next day and we sat in silence watching day-time TV, not saying anything, not looking at each other, not touching, but knowing that being next to each other was enough. Having each other was enough. My brother showed me strength. He never missed a day, and he would come home from school, and while everyone cried and I couldn't anymore, he was the one to look at me and suggest that we go downstairs and play Nintendo 64, just to get away from the reality that was upstairs. I wish we could have frozen time, and stayed down there forever, never having to go back up and see my mother's swollen eyes. They weren't mine, but I understood so much where they came from, and what they spoke of. Frank and I gripped onto those controllers like they would somehow teleport us into an alternate reality, into the game in which we played, where you were given life after life to start over, and re-create the opportunity to reach your goal while having all the more knowledge of how to do so.

And then there is my mother. I could never explain the ways that I love this woman. Her eyes may sometimes remind me of pain, and it's a different thing than I was ever used to growing up, having to hold her while she cries, which she still does, we all still do sometimes. She is the stongest, bravest woman I know, even though she argues differently. She could have been someone so much different. She could have given up on us, hey, half of my family did, she could have been another addition. They gave up, and it wasn't even as if anything happened to him. She got hit with every blow harder than I can ever imagine. But she held onto all of us. She knew whenever we needed a hug, or a quick whip with a dish towel to make us laugh, even if it was just for a moment, we were reminded that we still knew how.

It was as if through all of those tears we shared together, we grew into the most beautiful display of colors and strength. We're not out of the weeds yet, and we may never be, but at least the thorns are in the past. We face those problems every day, and an unthinkably uncertain future. It hurts to think of the lives that could have been, but look at what is. I spent such a meaningful day with the most true, dependable, inspriational and important people in my life. Today, I was surrounded by more than smiles because they had to smile, or laughter because it was polite, or a gathering that was just tradition. I looked around, and I didn't see my nose, or my smile, or my lips, but I saw what I can not see in the 30 people that left me behind, and I see family. I see strength and a loyalty that comes from more than an anual trip up north or south. I see people that confide in people because that's their only way, not because they feel like they should. I would be nothing without these 4 people. I only need that small number, our humble dinner, and our laughter that we let go on without end. I am thankful for every smile that we express together, because we all know what such a small suggestion means, and how quickly it can leave. We have each other. We have our un-extended table, and we have a rich history of battles fought, and won, together. It was a wonderful day. I hope you all had one like mine, because then that would mean that everyone shared a special day with the most important people they have, and felt a feeling that grateful can not even compare to.

Happy Thanksgiving everyon.