The Meaning of Life

UCM interrupts before she even begins: This post was written on Thanksgiving, but never posted due to some Blogger snafu. That is why it's appearing now, for your reading pleasure. Peace out!

There is a scene in Monty Python's "Meaning of Life" that pretty much sums up my situation at this moment.

The fat man has just finished eating an outrageous meal, but the waiter insists on tempting him with "one small, thin, mint wafer." The diner refuses, but the waiter pressures him until he relents. The fat guy eats the mint wafer and then he explodes, in the most vile fashion.

I ate a phenomenally tasty and HUGE meal today -- as many of us did. I ate so much food that it may have actually been a life-saving move when I declined to participate in a sampling of ALL the desserts. Instead, I ate a small slice of what I consider a "compromise pie," a pumpkin pie topped with a layer of pecan pie filling.

Food is the focus of Thanksgiving, but the gathering of people is what I've always found most compelling.

In my biological family, that was rarely a good thing. Family fights -- by which I mean: multiple fights on sundry topics, some of them violent -- had a tendency to break out with little warning. One year, my dad waved the carving knife in my face as he gesticulated wildly while yelling at me about something. Ah, pleasant memories...

But once, when I was 16, I went to Thanksgiving at Tia L and El Capitan's home outside of New Orleans that they ran as a B&B. That year, we celebrated my maternal grandparent's anniversary -- I think it was their 45th. That was the one time in my life that I was in the presence of a complete version of my maternal extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Only my sister wasn't there.

For reasons I've never understood, my mother is nothing at all like her siblings. They are gregarious, fun-loving, gentle-souled people who are spiritual but not especially religious. The Notorious M.O.M., in contrast, is a religious stick-in-the-mud with no concept that there are multiple perspectives of reality.

So being around all these positive people, rather than just my nutty nuclear family, was really special, especially en masse. There were nine of us grandkids, the three siblings and their spouses and my grandparents all staying in the old house. Sometimes, I come across a photo taken of all of us on the front porch, and I think, Well, there was a family there once, wasn't there?

But this Thanksgiving, which I spent with S2 and a few members of her extended family, S2 turned to me while the bird was still baking and asked, "Do you miss your family on a day like today?"

I replied, rather bluntly, something to the extent of: What the fuck is wrong with you? Or maybe I said, What the hell kind of question is that?

Because I'm a gracious guest.

She clarified, asking about my brother, Jaws I, who is in town and was having dinner with The Notorious M.O.M. (Jaws II is no longer with us. Today, the 24th, would have been his 31st birthday.)

In any case, I replied to S2, I do miss having a family, if that's what you mean. But I don't miss *that* family. As for Jaws I, I just feel bad about him being with The Notorious M.O.M.

But that was his choice. And mine, too. I'm taking a break from her these days, and that includes holidays.

S2, bless her, kindly invited me to join her family for dinner today.

I have, in my many years of being a single person, found myself in peculiar places on the holidays -- Thanksgiving more so than Christmas, the latter being something to which I've only once been invited to celebrate with non-relatives (and thus have frequently spent alone or working or at the movies).

In any case, I've learned that people may celebrate with a similar notion -- gather a large group, cook the foods you grew up eating on that holiday and eat too much of the spread -- but it's rarely carried out the same way.

One year, back in the late 80s, I was invited to have Thanksgiving with a Vietnamese family. My friend Thao had literally been on one of the last helicopters that lifted off in that infamous evacuation of the U.S. embassy at the end of the war. Her father had worked for the U.S. government, and his compensation was to get his family out of the country at the bitter end.

There were quite a few family members that made it over, and they all lived in the Dallas area. I was going to college there at the time. The year before, my dad had been waving the carving knife in my face, so I was happy to have an alternative to another trip to Houston. I arrived at Thao's home with the only thing I knew how to cook at the time: a pumpkin pie.

I walked in the front door and was greeted by Thao's grandmother, who didn't speak a word of English. She looked strangely at my pie, and I said, "It's pumpkin pie." She took it from me and placed it in the middle of the enormous dining table, which was not yet set.

As more relatives filtered in, they all stopped and regarded the pie, which sat woefully alone in the middle of the massive table. I would hear long strings of Vietnamese, punctuated periodically with the words, "pumpkin pie." Stuff that sounded like, "lo hanh ny eepy wah lo sho wee pumpkin pie" (with "pie" drawn out particularly long). Sometimes, there was giggling, or the curious upnotes of a question. They pointed at it, got close to it, sniffed it, regarded the "sweat" on its top.

I felt very awkward.

Appetizers consisted of spring rolls and wontons. Dinner was duck, with sides of noodles and fried rice and things wrapped in cabbage.

Dessert rolled around and the most curious thing happened. Someone cut me a slice of the pumpkin pie. A normal-sized slice. And then, because there were more than 20 people in attendance, the rest of the pie was cut into preciously small slices and *every single person* ate some of it. I have no idea what they thought.

One of Thao's cousins, who I knew, told me, "We are all eating a piece of your stupid, freaky pie because you are a guest."

Do you like it? I asked.

She scrunched up her face and replied, "Do I look like I like it?" At which point, Thao told her to shut up and then insisted her cousin was just teasing me.

It remains a mystery.

But, then, so does what happened today.

At S2's house, there is a tradition with which I am utterly unfamiliar, and when I asked S2 if it was *really* a tradition or something silly, she said, "It's just a thing we do."

There was some singing of a "blessing," that had hand movements vaguely reminiscent of the Village People doing "YMCA." (That wasn't the silly part.)

There was also the creation of a circle around the table in which we each had a popper. I don't know what you call those things -- the round cardboard that looks like a bow, and you pull it on the end and it makes a popping sound. Inside is a fortune or a joke or a trivia question along with a little toy or ornament. (That wasn't the silly part, either.)

Rather, the "silly" part (and forgive me, S2, if you think this is *not* silly), was the fact that everyone's table setting came with a paper crown that we were expected to wear.

It turns out that the paper crowns come with those popper things, a fact explained to me by my English sister-in-law and then, further explained by S2 that her father's family is English by way of Canada (whereas mine is French by way of Canada). This explains, in part, why S2's non-religious family has fun on their holidays, while mine is into a freaky bit of Catholic piety and sexual repression.

But I digress.

The point is, they were all wearing silly hats. All of them. And despite the fact that, upon donning my own paper crown, S2 pronounced me "another person with a big head," I joined in this silliness. It was a sweet and funny scene.

In fact, the entire event took me to a place I've been and never been at the same time. The relaxed atmosphere, the kids running around entertaining one another while the adults enjoyed G&Ts and vodka with cranberry juice, the fabulous spread of food, the congenial conversation ... it was like being with a real family. Like what the Thanksgiving meal at my aunt & uncle's B&B would've been like that year if my parents -- who were warring behind the scenes and throwing daggers with their eyes at Jaws I, II and me across the table (warning us, all the time, not to "say anything" about their marital discord and secret separations) -- ... if they weren't there. *That* is what I think it might have been like. Which is why S2 & JB's house on Thanksgiving felt like such a great place to be: someplace I almost was once in my own family and, at the same time, someplace I've never been.

I am not a member of their family. But today, they welcomed me as Good Enough -- and they got me liquored up and then fed me until I was about to burst. And, mercifully, no one took offense that I passed on the "sampler platter" of *everyone's* desserts.

Just as mercifully, no one subsequently taunted me into eating a "small, thin, mint wafer." They just let me kick back in a comfortable chair and listen to them be a family -- an interesting, talkative, likeable ... family -- while the turkey slowly digested and moved me toward stupor.

Later, as I waddled toward the door, making my way through the crowd of kids putting on shoes and adults donning coats, I opened my mouth to say "thanks" but was cut off at each turn by one or another of them beating me to the punch, thanking *me* for coming. Such warmth follows you out the door and lingers for a long, long time. It lingers still.