PLANK NOVEMBER 22, 2012
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
It's the holiday when you’re never where you need to be. It’s also the one when the people you need to be with, the ones who are already there and waiting for you because they live there, the meal is at their house, feel the least shame about telling you to try. You can’t, though. You’ll never make it. It’s too late. If you’d set out two days ago you might have made it—if there had been seats, which you're pretty sure there weren’t; to get one you would have had to book last week, last week when you still weren't sure that you could come—but now it’s all a mess and it’s impossible and you are so very sorry but, hey, so be it.
A silence. And then, as always, this: "What happened?" But you just told them. In detail. For fifteen minutes. Which means what they want from you is not the facts (to them only one fact matters: you’re not there), but the thing you left out, the deeper thing, the truth. What they’re actually asking is: What happened to you?
“Let’s just say it’s been a crazy year.” Shouldn’t that cover it? Shouldn’t that be enough? Doesn’t that say without coming out and saying it that No, I’m not perfect, and Yes, I let things slide sometimes (instead of assuming they had no seats two days ago, I could have made sure by using the Orbitz phone app, which would have taken ten seconds, plus it’s free), but you have to consider the larger context, too. My work. My relationship. The surgery. That thing where my neighbor cut power to our block while building a pool and I moved to a motel. Then throw in the mounting hassles of life in general, which you find overwhelming too, admit it. Like how you can’t just mail things anymore, you have to Fedex or UPS them—and not just ‘standard overnight’ (unless you want to lose the deal) but ‘priority pre-dawn special handling.’ And what about those requests for software updates that used to show up weeks apart but now arrive hourly, forcing a decision: ‘Download Now’ and interrupt your work or ‘Download Later’ and risk a glitch that will ruin or lose your work?
“That would make three in a row,” they say.
Support thought-provoking, quality journalism. Join The New Republic for $3.99/month.
“Of what?” You drifted off. The holidays exhaust you. Which means you’re exhausted half the fall and winter, creating a backlog of jobs and obligations that keep you busy right on through the summer, a season that used to be a holiday.
“Three crazy years,” they say. “Oh, wait. It’s four. Your brother here just reminded me it’s four.”
“When did my brother get there?” Why even ask, though? Why set them up for their zinger? You’ll never learn. Then again, what are holidays but sets of rituals, so why stop observing this one?
“On time,” they say.
It’s the holiday when you’re never where you’re supposed to be. But neither is anyone else, you come to learn. Like you, they were expected somewhere else but they never got there, so, instead, they’re here. And so are you. And all the others, too. Guilty, maybe, but far from lonely.
And so you sit down together and you eat.
7 comments
Say what? Maybe yours is one of those passive-aggressive, guilt-tripping families that extracts its pound of red meat every time you fall short of their idealized notion of the good son--or father, or brother or whatever you are to them--but there's nothing universally guilt-inducing about Thanksgiving. Having lived most of the past decade in a country (Australia) where Thanksgiving is not celebrated and where even if you can round up a handful of American expats for some after-work turkey, the summery weather and 9PM sunsets tend to spoil the mood, I have to say that in my book TG is one of America's soundest inventions, the nation at her ecumenical, democratic best. I'm never in the right place on Thanksgiving anymore--this year on Turkey Day I took a 90-minute break from work to go surfing and capped it with a Whopper, fries and a Coke--but that isn't Thanksgiving's fault. Don't lay your guilt on me.
- AaronW
November 22, 2012 at 6:09pm
Been one of those years for us too. We had chicken, and it was great. Happy Thanksgiving!
- Wonderland
November 22, 2012 at 6:34pm
One of the benefits of getting older is that they come here and you don't have to go there. Well, I'm not sure it's a benefit. You are here and so are they, and you cannot take leave when you've had your fill because you live here. Here, there, it seems we are never satisfied. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it's mostly about eating and drinking and fellowship, three of my favorite activities. That nobody but me brings the expensive champagne that everybody else drinks is okay. They did come here and I didn't have to go there. Oh, the days of youth when I had to go there. Who's going to clean up this mess!
- rayward
November 23, 2012 at 8:35am
I have moved to a post-individual-guilt stage of life. I can't possibly be half the person (child, parent, colleague, neighbor) the people who know me expect me to be. I don't care. Beyond the person I married, and the children we have together, I refuse to feel guilt about small slights to small numbers of people, however close they may be in my social graph. The are all as flawed as I am, so they, like me, need to get over that. The things that matter enough to experience guilt over affect the whole world, or at least large pieces of it. The question we ought to have been asking after giving our thanks yesterday is "what are YOU doing for 50 years from now?"
- IowaBeauty
November 23, 2012 at 9:19am
Happy Thanksgiving everybody.
- Sophia
November 23, 2012 at 3:49pm
Despite my age, which is up there, I have travelled with wife & child for several years running clear across country (California to NY) to share the holiday with my wife's sisters & extended family. So no gulit here on not being there. Moreover, did my share of the cooking & clean up, while there. Several good comments above, but I especially like IowBeauty's take on gulit: Feel guilty about the big stuff, don't sweat the picayune. (Tangential comment re: guilt - when I hear people fret about how doing some relatively small thing might induce guilt, whether it's over-indulgent eating (witness the ubiquity of "guilt free" food products for sale), or some other pleasure of the flesh, what is often really meant is that one either fears being caught doing that bad thing, or that doing that bad thing causes one to feel stupid, because of the consequences for oneself. Invoking guilt often is just basically a form of self-flattery, and self-deception, as it suggests a special sensitivity or concern for the feelings of others. For instance, while I might feel some smidgen of guilt about flirting too flagrantly with that pretty young thing seated next to me at table, whatever guilt there is pales in comparison to fear of the wrathful gaze of my wife if she should catch me in the act.)
- Haole45
November 24, 2012 at 2:10pm
Was this the winner in a contest to imitate the style of Franz Kafka?
- TARFON
November 26, 2012 at 11:11am