CARRIED AWAY BY OWLS

Thanksgiving is 48 hours away. Already I’m feeling weighed down -- drowning in too much! I don’t want all that food on Thursday. I don’t want to watch a Christmas Parade, the official opening of the  troughs of commerce. Somebody will bring out a cheese tray and shrimp as the last mega-balloon wafts down 5th Avenue. Really? Didn’t we just finish coffee and Rice Krispies a few minutes ago?

Several women will perform the THANKSGIVING MINUET in the kitchen — a ballet of opening and closing refrigerator, ovens, and cabinets with dogs underfoot and the menfolk waiting for the pre-football announcers. Dinner is timed to arrive at the table between televised events.  

Why are we doing this anyway? I get all that ritual, shared ceremony, national day of thanks — all good. But what about the flip side? If I am to be totally honest, I’m not so thankful for that immigration/genocide event. What about our indigenous friends? Anybody else wonder how the Cherokee or Senecas “celebrate” Thanksgiving? I just saw that it’s a “Day of Mourning” for native Americans. Rightfully so.

Radio talk shows this pre-Thanksgiving week aired conversations about avoiding unpleasant topics at the dinner table. On one show, everybody piled on “Uncle Joe”, the typical family blowhard, the obnoxious political outlier. 

Have you ever wondered if you are the “Uncle Joe?” Or the “Aunt Jean?” I confess: it might be me! I’m sick of “everybody does it” and “how do you know your facts are right?” and “yeah, if the world is heating up, how come it’s so damned cold in here?” I rise to the bait when somebody says “$15 an hour? You might as well shut down all small business.” And “women shouldn’t be paid as much as men —they aren’t the bread winners.”  I want to scream “Shut up! Eat you tenth helping of mashed potatoes! White men can’t jump!”

But I won’t. 

We’ve been watching “The Crown” at our house. It’s a quiet series — no wartime heroics, no alarm bell scandals in England during the period (mid 1960s - early 1970). But if you watch and listen, some soul stabbing ideas are buried in those dialogues. An elderly Princess Ann (Phillip’s mother) says “I realized at age 70 that I was no longer a participant. Now I am an observer.”  My 80-something year old friend MaryAnn wrote “She was right. My neighbors never ask me anything about my life — what I did, where I came from and how I got to this place. Our conversations are always about them. But I remember being in my 40s and I never really knew the retired couple who lived next door. I just never bothered.”

Where to go with all this? I am weighed down with memories, with regrets, with longing for those dear ones no longer here. Is “too much" a blessing or a curse?  

Maybe Thanksgiving is less about giving thanks and more about atonement.

THANK YOU, DANIEL L.