If you colored in this cartoon a little, this is mi familia. Like so many others, we are beset, and throughout our entire group, many are barely keeping heads above water. Welcome to Thanksgiving, 2011. This is the reality.
Every year, the Hallmark commercials and, heck, even the grocery store commercials make a big deal out of the candlelit table, leaves strewn attractively, with well-groomed, gender-normative couples looking earnest and dewy-eyed. This is the perception we’re given of family. “We have each other,” they say, and smile into each others’ eyes.
Real families are a bit different. If there are attractively strewn leaves on the table, they don’t stay attractive for long, because someone’s sleeve drags over them, nudging them that much closer to the oddly snapping, possibly smoking tapers, or one of the Wee Wild Men comes along and takes one. Or takes two chubby fistsful of attractively strewn leaves, and a bit of the tablecloth, and someone has to – Quick! grab the plates.
Usually it’s too loud around the table, and someone is annoyed that there are the wrong type of potatoes; someone wants cornbread dressing instead of walnut bread dressing, and someone else wants the traditional canned cranberry sauce, only some gourmand freak made cranberry relish out of shaved oranges and finely shredded onions and ginger and fresh berries, and it’s not even shaped like a can, and Lord, whose nasty idea was that??? The vegetarians practically carve a line down the center of the table, and the omnivore’s dilemma this meal is wanting a taste of the menu from the other half of the buffet, and trying to figure out how to get it without raising an indignant hue and cry of, “Hey! You’ve got your own!”
Sometimes real family is like one long, loud, bickering hurricane sweeping past.
Sometimes real family annoy each other. Sometimes, real family can’t stand to lose a board game, and become wildly competitive, loud, and finger-pointy about who put down a fake word, who won canasta by half a point, or who owes the bank money in Monopoly. Sometimes real family cheats. And sigh and eye-roll about stories they’ve heard before. And mouth lines during movies, and get things thrown at them. Or make fun of the actors in romantic comedies, and get run out of the room. Or have revisionist ideas of childhood or past parenting, and accuse us of things that never happened – or refuse to remember what exactly happened, even though it was only last year.
Sometimes, real family isn’t even related by blood.
But real families, when they see each other barely keeping their heads above water, never, ever let each other drown.
No matter what.
“We have each other” is not a tepid, second place, runner-up sort of phrase. It doesn’t come strewn with attractive garland and dewy eyes. It’s messy and non-linear and sometimes snappish and spiky and sarcastic and really annoying, grumpy and in a back bedroom by itself, trying to read, or off on an all-day, twenty mile hike because, ye wormy green apples, who are all these people? But it is fierce, this love, and it does not let go. It is a love that means a bit more than something passing and timid and waffling and commercial. It’s love like a rock – okay, sometimes the rock rolls over your fingers and squashes a bit, but when it comes down to it, you are grateful that it is solid.
And for the grace of family – those of blood, and those of belonging; those of chromosome, and those of choice, I am truly thankful.
Cartoon clipped from The Philadelphia Enquirer in 2009 and passed along via email through many people.
However, I did find one set of instructions. I like the safefty tip!
“Another very easy fall craft project is making a leaf table runner. Yes, using real leaves and as inexpensive as you like.
Items you will need should be at least ten, large fall leaves and a hot glue gun. The number of leaves you need depends on the length of your table. This runner will not hang over the edge of your table. In fact, it should be properly centered. Other items you may want will be small gourds and battery operated candles.
Once you have your leaves, decide your pattern. You can lay the leaves tip over stem, or splay them a little. Go ahead and lay the leaves out as you want them. Now, starting with the overlapping leaf, pick it up and put just a dab of hot glue on the underside then press onto the next leaf. Continue doing this until you have all leaves glued to one another.
Very simple to do and done in minutes. Now you may want to add a couple of battery operated candles on top of your runner. Do not use real flame candles! With real flame there will be a fire hazard.”
I just looked up the leafy table runner myself….Martha is now advocating gauzy leafs, cut out and glued on, which makes more sense. But I swear I watched in horror while real leaves were glued on to fabric.
We’ve been having some complicated times in our neck of the woods, too, but it was so good to be together yesterday around the table and hanging out in the living room, talking too loud, telling inappropriate stories during dinner, playing games, and laughing, laughing, laughing. I am ever and always grateful for my people, but I was struck by how much and how effortlessly they can heal me when I am a little broken.
I agree wholeheartedly (and I hope Thanksgiving 2012 sees your family in a safer place), but what I really want to talk about, inspired by your mention of strewn leaves, is a Martha Stewart episode I happened to see in which she instructed us viewers how to make a decorative thanksgiving runner for the table by glueing leaves onto fabric. I can’t imagine the horror of tacky leaf bits that would result if I tried this, not to mention the fact that glued on leaf bits don’t Keep real well, and you’d have to do it all over again the next year. So Pointless.
(the other M.S. thing I am never going to do is use my 24 galvanized steel buckets to make ice lanterns for my next skating party)
I hope you two had a happy and toasty warm Thanksgiving!
…Charlotte, real leaves? And real glue? On the tablecloth!?
Well, there’s water soluble glue, so they’d come off easily enough, but they’d have to be freshly-picked that day and not dried, or they’d crumple and crunch on the table top, and I can’t see leaf-mold in the food as appetizing in any way… but, how would you glue down green leaves? They wouldn’t stick! … well, now you’ve got me going; I have to look this up…
*smiling at cartoon* Happy Thanksgiving!