What Are You Doing for Thanksgiving?

Would my answer make Thanksgiving holier for you?

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Are you cooking for all your grandkids?”

That question!

Would my answer make Thanksgiving holier for you?

Feeling picked at,

judged,

I am tempted to issue in my warning voice:

“Why do you want to know?

Are your own plans so odious,

you need to focus on mine?”

Instead I settle on the more mysterious,

“I don’t celebrate that holiday!”

This works best if I affect a slight mid-eastern accent.

My answer disturbs her.

Has she insulted me or my religion?

She stops cold.

She thinks but does not say,

“What kind of extreme un-American religion would it be

that frowns on the eating of Thanksgiving dinner?”

I stifle and don’t say,

“None of your damn business.”

But I toss it back.

“Are you having blah blah with your whole family?”

Then having opened that can of worms,

I’m obliged to listen to her recitation of who came,

and who had to go to the other in-laws,

and at the last minute

a whole bunch of cousins she hadn’t seen in twenty years arrived from New Jersey

and had to stay in a hotel.

Her voice drops into her sad… life isn’t as good as I expected… range.

Sometimes when asked I explain I only observe Succoth the holy day of celebrating

the bounty by consuming it while getting buzzed on kosher wine in a little shelter in

the backyard…

open to the stars.

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