Thanksgiving Day with Dad

In my writing, I've always been very hesitant to write personally about myself. I suppose this is because I'm actually a pretty shy person and in writing, just like in my general life, I'm very hesitant to reveal much about myself. I think this is one reason I have written much more imaginitive fiction than essay type writing. When you're using your imagination, you don't have to let people know you. You can divert all attention to a completely different place. I suspect that my extreme reluctance to open myself up to others has prevented me from accomplishing many things in my life. It is hard to pinpoint at this place and time exactly what those things might be, but I do believe there are many.


Therefore, it is my goal in this forum to move past this demon of mine and write with great frankness and honesty about myself. Let's see if can do this...



On Thanksgiving Day, I drove to Camilla from Valdosta to have Thanksgiving Dinner with my family at my dad's house. My step-mom had cooked the usual spread and those in attendence were my sister, Michelle, her two children: Abigail and Meredith who are three years old and one respectively, her husband, Brandon, my dad and Michelle. So it was a fairly slim crowd. My step-brother Michael had apparently bolted to Miami of all places to visit a friend for the day and my step-sister, Leigh, was also MIA. Rumor had it she was visiting her husband's family in St. Simon's. I was slightly bummed by the absence of these individuals, especially Leigh since she and I tend to yuck it up a bit when we're together. I could write a bit more about she and I but think I will save that for another day. Also, Maria, my girlfriend, didn't come with me due to needing to spend the day with her own family. My uncle, my dad's brother, Super Bob, as I've always called him was also absent. He and my dad have a long-standing feud over various issues that is mostly perpetuated by my uncle who tends to carry on a solitude and somewhat paranoid existence. He is also perhaps the subject of another day. All of these missing individuals seemed to suck the energy out of the holiday for me although my dad seemed really happy to see me which made me feel good. Also, it is neat seeing him behave so affectionately towards his two grand-children. It makes me wonder where that side of him was when I was growing up.


My step-mom is a very good cook, but she did not make congealed salad for the meal which to me, was disappointing. The conversation was very low-key. The only thing that stands out in my mind was when I asked my dad if he wanted a swimsuit calendar for Christmas this year as has been my custom to get him ever since I was about twelve years old. Before he could answer, Miss Joy, my step-mom, said that I should not give him a swimsuit calendar because it was embarrassing to her to live with a sixty-two year old man who still took pleasure in hanging a calendar featuring scantily clad young women in his study. My dad suggested to me that Miss Joy didn't need to be studied and that I continue our family tradition. He also requested a bottle of Crown Royal as a gift so that he might apply it to his holiday glass of egg nog. Miss Joy offered a general snort of disgust but made no further comment on the subject. I should interject at this point that my dad and step-mom are not actually married. They were married for ten years before Miss Joy moved out without ceremony a few days before Christmas some years ago and were divorced afterward. However, to the best of my knowledge, they never truly broke up in spite of this, but have also never formally retied the knot either...to the best of my knowledge at least. My dad is not always forthcoming with this type of information.


After the meal and a couple of hours of vegetating in front of the television, my dad announced it was time to drive his cows off the rye field where they had been grazing throughout the day. He brought Sam, his beloved Golden Retriever, and a reluctant Abigail with him to complete this task. I also went. Sam was happy to encounter a human approximately his own height and attempted to lick her enthusiastically. Abigail was not at all pleased by the dog's atttentions nor the very prevalent cow patties at her feet that threatened to soil her pink Dora the Explorer shoes. She cried and complained throughout the ordeal, forcing my dad to carry her most of the way. Amused by the scene, I took pictures of cow patties with my cell phone and sent them to Maria, sure that she would appreciate it as an artistic gesture.


After the cows were successfully run off the rye field, we went back in the house and resumed a vegetative state for awhile. I am always a bit miffed when I go home to my parents' house on weekends because none of them care to watch sports on TV. I've always considered it a part of my Thanksgiving Day tradition to watch pro football after lunch. But there was no way that was going to happen this year as Miss Joy forbids sports to be watched on her tevelevision. I think there was some sort of Lifetime Channel movie on that was less than captivating to me, so I read a book and eventually dozed off. My dad was sitting in a chair beside me and also snoozing even as my one-year old niece, Meredith ran in frantic circles around the living room for no apparent reason.


Eventually, my sister's family went back home and I began thinking about heading home myself. I always feel vaguely guilty about leaving home every time I go because I think my dad hates for me to leave and probably thinks that I don't come to see him nearly enough. But at the same time, I was eager to head home and see Maria who was coming to spend the night with me. I had just gathered the guts to tell my dad I was leaving when he asked me if I wanted to go to Michelle's house with him because he was going to borrow some welding equipment from him. A part of me wanted to say, "No thanks, Dad. I need to head back," but another part of me didn't want to disappoint him and he said all he had to do was pick up this piece of equipment and head back. I sensed he wanted some alone time with me, so I agreed to go with him.

On the way to Michelle's house, my dad discussed my uncle, Super Bob. His approval rating in recent years has fallen far below the Super level, but I still try to stay in touch with him unlike everyone else in my family. My dad told me Bob had approached him twice recently with an apparent desire to reconcile their differences. My dad wanted to know, if, in my professional opinion, I thought Bob was crazy. I contemplated this for a minute and informed my father that he would certainly meet the DSM criteria for Paranoid Personality Disorder. He considered this without commenting.

When we got to my sister's house, Brandon was outside waiting with the piece of welding equipment in the back of his truck. The two of them fell into a conversation about buying land and various types of land-clearing equipment. I had absolutely nothing to contribute to this discussion having no knowledge of these things. For the umpteenth time, I got the feeling that Brandon is actually much closer with my dad than I am. Somehow, I did not inherit the inerest in mechanics and heavy equipment gene. There seem to be very few points of intersect between my dad's interests and mine I often believe. But then other times I think perhaps it has nothing to do with common interests and much more about old but unsettled resentments between us. I don't know if it's his fault or mine that those exist, but neither of us seem capable of really getting to the bottom of it and moving past it. I see the easy-going way Brandon interacts with him and suspect that I will never have that kind of relationship with him. In any case, I suppose it is what it is and there's no use worrying about it too much. I know my dad will always be there if I'm in any kind of crunch and I guess that's more than enough.

After my dad and Brandon engaged in deep conversation for about an hour, I finally mentioned that I needed to get back so I wouldn't keep Maria waiting on me too long. So my dad reluctantly left and took me back to his house so I could leave. On the way back, he and I discussed possibly going skiing in February in Colorado. My dad is hyper-enthusiastic about skiing and this is one point where I can meet him. In the past, I've always thought we bonded on the slopes, but when the trip was over, it seemed that things went right back to how they were before.

I told my dad I would check my finances to see if I could afford such a trip and I imagine I will go and have fun doing it although I hate to leave my girlfriend for that long.

When I got back to his house, I told him bye and shook his hand. He thanked me for coming with a pained expression that suggested he wished I would have stayed longer. Then I got in my car and drove away, happy to be going and looking forward to seeing Maria.