Reports From the Nursery (Part Twelve)
By Alexis, In Her Own Words
It’s tough to have a lot of perspective on the passage of time when you only have 18 months of actual living to go on. It’s a burden I carry in my reports to all of you— and despite my hope that you find some value in my backstory memories of a pre-birth Heaven, my youth and relative inexperience remains a concern that weighs on me every time I settle back to scribble my thoughts and observations.
But —as I recall Shakespeare once saying, during one memorable celestial meet-n-greet Happy Hour— if you have literary aspirations, “ya gotta write what you know, ya know?” (This, even though Bard Willie visited neither fair Verona or even rotten Denmark, ever, and that didn’t seem to slow down his own storytelling production. Writers; go figure, eh?)
And what I know is, if you don’t know something… you ask somebody who’s been there before. This is my roundabout way of introducing you to Mia, one of my playground acquaintances who has oft proven herself remarkably informative.
Mia is an older woman. Much older. She’s almost three, which means she has double the amount of experience compared to moi when it comes to navigating the often-baffling twists and turns of human life. As such, she can leave me agape at her level of sophisticated insight regarding the mysterious rituals and ceremonies that endlessly dot the human calendar.
Take, for instance, this thing called “Thanksgiving.” I have but a dim memory of this event from my last experience (read: “my first and, so far, only experience”) from twelve months ago. I was awfully young back then, and probably not yet fully invested with this whole “human” -thing I had found myself in. Who knew this Thanksgiving business happened every flippin’ year?
The point is, I should have at least taken notes, so I’d understand what to expect. I didn’t, of course, which is why Mia came in so handy now.
I had been sensing that something was about to happen. For a week, odd decorations like ceramic cornucopias amid carved-wood Pilgrims and Indians had started appearing on side tables and dining room shelves. The Halloween pumpkin —now hideously shrunken and deformed— finally disappeared from the front porch, only to be replaced with a fresh new Thanksgiving pumpkin arranged at the base of carefully stacked cornstalks.
Worst of all, these… birds, I guess, though squat and unlovely and totally unlike any kind of bird I had seen back in Heaven’s aviaries— started showing up all over the house. Some were hollow, as if meant to hold some kind of hot fluid. Some were crude drawings, scrawled in crayon and yellow with age, which to my untrained eye looked like a child’s hand had been pressed into service as a crude model for the project. Some were oversized ceramic renderings of somebody’s description of a turkey, provided to an artisan who had never actually seen one herself.
According to Mia “Thanksgiving is a holiday. It’s when all these people give thanks, you see.”
I was doubtful. “Thanks for what?”
Mia’s tone betrayed no lack of confidence. “For everything. Some of it, I think, is for having other people to argue with. It’s one of the highlights of the holiday, you know.”
I pressed Mia for more details, and this is the story she told me…
• • •
“To understand the political dynamics of Thanksgiving dinner, it’s essential to examine the key players,” Mia said. “In my family’s case, first, there’s Uncle Daniel. His penchant for… uh, let’s call it ‘active’ political commentary is rivaled only by his enthusiasm for a good bourbon. For Uncle Daniel, Thanksgiving’s less a meal than a forum. He arrives armed with reams of argument gleaned from articles nobody else has read, along with a monologue he’d been perfecting since before cable news channels existed.”
“Opposing him is Cousin Heather, the university sophomore who has recently discovered activism. From what I overheard from my highchair, Heather now holds an all-consuming passion for social justice, which she developed earlier this semester in a Poli Sci class. She also has declared a minor in Environmental Studies, and a major in making sure everyone knows she did. She arrived at the table armed with snarky insights from the assistant professor who teaches her Poli Sci class, reinforced with TikTok soundbites and armored by an uncanny ability to turn every conversation into a heated debate about climate change.”
“The dinner began innocently enough,” Mia recalled. “The opening Preyer and salvo came during the ceremonial carving of the turkey.”
“This bird,” Uncle Daniel declared, wielding the knife like a saber, “is the symbol of American freedom! Benjamin Franklin himself wanted the turkey as our national bird!”
“That’s actually a myth,” Heather counters, her voice carrying the rock-solid conviction of someone who just Googled it in real-time, or Facebooked with someone who might have. “Franklin’s letter was merely being sarcastic. Besides, the point was turkeys are a distinctly native species.”
“‘That’s what I’m sayin’” Uncle Daniel shouted. “Merica!! Land of the free!”
“A better symbol of oppression and colonialisme,” Heather countered. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Mia sighed. “And this remark set off Aunt Gladys, who has no discernible political affiliation… but who considers it her solemn duty to defend all holiday traditions, no matter how historically inaccurate”.
“Now listen here,” Aunt Gladys said, gesturing wildly with a spoon. “Thanksgiving is about tradition, not politics!”
“The irony of your statement is lost on no one,” Heather noted, wrinkling her nose. Aunt Gladys shot daggers at Heather— figuratively, if only because the daggers were not on the table.
“So,” Mia continued, “the meal proceeded with all the tension you’d expect. The green bean casserole, once a neutral party, became weaponized when Uncle Daniel suggested that real Americans don’t put almonds on top of it. This prompted Heather to deliver a 15-minute lecture on culinary diversity and the marginalization of nontraditional recipes.”
Meanwhile, Grandpa sat quietly at the head of the table, pretending not to hear anything but occasionally muttering, “This is why I voted for Eisenhower. Or would have, if I hadn’t been five years old when he ran.”
As dessert approached, the stakes escalated. Uncle Daniel unveiled his pièce de résistance: a diatribe against “those morons in Washington” who, according to him, are “driving the country over the damn cliff!” Heather countered with an impassioned plea for systemic change, lacking only her set of PowerPoint slides to project onto the side of the refrigerator. Aunt Gladys, desperate to steer the conversation away from politics, suggested a round of charades, but nobody heard her over the din of ideological warfare.
“Probably for the best,” Mia observed. “Charades would not have ended well.”
“Anyway, the pumpkin pie was served, redolent in an atmosphere thick with tension and nutmeg. Uncle Dan eyed the whipped cream suspiciously, convinced it’s part of a secret agenda to undermine traditional American toppings. Heather, determined to have the last word, accused the pie itself of perpetuating stereotypes about fall dessert dishes. She asked if anybody has tried hummus.”
“By the time the coffee was poured, everyone was exhausted… including the dog, who wisely found refuge under the table, to seize upon any thrown edibles as well as to avoid any random verbal shrapnel.”
“Yet,” Mia said, a thoughtful expression on her face, “despite the chaos, there was a peculiar kind of unity in the dysfunction. For all the arguing, nobody left the table. Plates were passed, albeit begrudgingly, and when Grandma accidentally spilled the gravy, everyone laughed— including Grandma.”
Mia shrugged. “It’s a fragile truce, but it’s enough to carry them through until next year. And yes, Alexis: they do this. Every. Single. Year.”
• • •
“Good Lord!” I gasped when Mia had finished. “That all sounds horrible!”
She nodded. “Yep. When everybody started gathering coats, scarves and leftovers —a lot of leftovers— and got ready to leave, I expected to see bloodshed, or at minimum an incoming salvo of leftover mashed potato.”
“But that’s not what happened,” Mia told me.
As the evening winds down and leftovers were packed into mismatched containers, Uncle Daniel clapped Heather on the shoulder and said, “I like your confidence. You’ve got some strong opinions there, kiddo.”
Heather, unable to mask her surprise, managed a half-smile. “So do you, Uncle Danny.”
“And that’s the thing about Thanksgiving,” Mia said. “It can be messy as a diaper full of Brussel sprouts, or as contentious as the colic, and it’s often just plain dumb. But it’s also a reminder of family — proof that family is the one thing that can withstand even the most heated debates about politics, or personalities, or whether a bald eagle would taste better.”
“That’s a relief,” I said.
“Yep,” Mia smiled. “Provided there’s enough pie to go around.”
— end —
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Alexis and her musings will return to these pages in future editions.
But not right now: she’s still wondering about all those turkeys. And still wondering, why?)
