Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, despite one of my Thanksgivings being one of the worst days of my life.
I love Thanksgiving because it’s simply about being together and being grateful and sharing food. No gifts. Sharing a meal together is such a powerful thing, and a Thanksgiving meal is a great representation of that power. In addition, many studies over the past decade have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed. Deliberate gratitude shifts one’s attention away from toxic emotions, such as resentment and envy
I have had wonderful Thanksgiving meals with friends and wonderful Thanksgiving meals with people I didn’t know that well, who took pity on me for being so far from my family. I celebrated Thanksgiving in Germany with American friends, even daring to cook an entire Thanksgiving meal for my French friends (they loved my homemade stuffing). I have spent just one Thanksgiving alone: somehow, I didn’t get any invites to a dinner, and too embarrassed to invite myself, I just cooked myself a little meal at home and watched movies all day with my dogs. It actually wasn’t half bad…
The bad Thanksgiving day, I think in 1986, featured a lovely Thanksgiving meal and a stress-free gathering I hadn’t enjoyed with my family in years. It was one of the last hosted at my paternal grandmother, before she got too old to put it together and, instead, started attending my mother’s side of the family’s celebration. It was the only family Thanksgiving dinner I ever went to that my father didn’t come to at all.
He had said he wasn’t coming, and I was glad: no drunk, sullen Dad, sitting there, listening to everyone talking, convincing himself that every comment was meant somehow to insult him, that every gesture by my grandmother was somehow her making fun of him. What he saw at family gatherings and what the reality was could not have been farther apart. Not having him at Thanksgiving that year took enormous pressure off the event. I felt like we were all laughing a bit more, we were all more at ease, we knew the 500-pound gorilla was not going to be sitting in the room, waiting to explode later at my Mom’s. He was living in his own apartment, and I had no plans to see him at all while I was at my Mom’s – I was done with ugly drunken encounters, encounters that were getting more and more menacing.
After the meal, sitting in my Mom’s living room, intending to spend the rest of the weekend with her before I returned to college, I commented, “I’m sorry to say this, Mom, but this really has been the best Thanksgiving I’ve had in a very long time.” She agreed. We went back to watching our movie.
Then the phone started ringing.
When she would answer, there was silence. It was Dad. He wouldn’t speak at all. He did this a lot with her. She would sit there for a while, then say, “I’m going to hang up now.” A few minutes later, the phone would ring again, and she’d answer again, and just sit there, and after a while, hang up.
Then the phone stopped ringing.
Then came the banging at the door.
A lunge at me, me running, my Mom getting pummeled, my frantic phone call to the police, and the police arriving, talking to him more than us, and then allowing him to drive back to his apartment – obviously drunk. No arrest. My Mom and I packed up my things and jumped in her car and drove to Owensboro, where we stayed in a hotel and she put ice on her swelling face. She drove me on to university the next morning and returned to her home. I called to check on her, but she refused to talk about what happened that night. This incident hasn’t really been discussed since.
A year later, Dad got sober. About a decade later, Dad killed himself. He ever dealt with his profound anger and paranoia. To his dying day, he still thought every comment was meant somehow to insult him, that every gesture somehow made fun of him or referred to some weakness he felt he had. It was only in reading his suicide note that I knew just how full of resentment he still was.
I don’t know why I didn’t let this incident define Thanksgiving for me, why I refused to associate Thanksgiving with such an ugly, dangerous incident of domestic violence. I was determined to keep Thanksgiving something special for me. Staying away from Kentucky for a few years and being in control of my own celebration helped greatly with that. I worked to make sure Thanksgiving quickly again became something I looked forward to every year.
It’s 2019, and another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I’ve had a lovely time.
But I’m also not sure why I have been thinking about this incident so much this year. It’s usually just a blip in my brain, one I move on from in a sea of food preparation and eating and time with my husband and memories of far more good Thanksgiving. Since it’s come up, since I’ve been thinking about it, I decided to write about it. I’m writing about it because I want to remind anyone who might read this that you really can make a holiday your own, you can make any day your own, you really are in control of how you think about your past, and you really can celebrate any special event – and every day – anyway YOU want to.
I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving and will have many more to come.
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