Thanksgiving

When I was a boy, no one gave me much encouragement or helped me develop many practical skills. No one showed me how to build a campfire or refinish a coffee table, and I was strongly discouraged from making the effort on my own. My parents were not especially cruel people, so I can’t say exactly why they consistently did this. What were they thinking? Well, I suspect, generally speaking, my mother was afraid I’d get hurt. She suffered from schizophrenia, so her fears were often exaggerated. I imagine she envisioned me losing limbs and my eyes getting gouged out. My father, on the other hand, was a pessimist, and I suspect he thought I would be disappointed if I failed or if an endeavor didn’t work out perfectly. Those are the best explanations I can come up with. Of course, what happened was I grew up feeling incompetent and incapable.

I moved back in with my parents following my head surgeries in the late ‘90s. I was in my early 30s by then, and my parents were still discouraging me, still telling me I couldn’t do anything. Then in 2001, my mother slipped on a patch of ice and broke several bones in her hand. It was a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, and mother’s arm would be in a cast until after the new year.

My father refused to even make sandwiches or heat soup for himself, so either I was going to have to make Thanksgiving dinner, or we were going without. I had made a few dishes but never anything like Thanksgiving dinner. However, it had been a rough year for all of us. Mother suffered a psychotic breakdown the previous Christmas, and she had been in and out of the hospital for months. There had even been talk of putting her in a long-term treatment facility. She was not stabilized until October. So I wanted the three of us to have a nice Thanksgiving. I broke out the cookbooks, made plans, bought everything I needed, and on Thanksgiving, I went to work.

The meal I prepared was, of course, not up to the standards of a five-star restaurant, but it was pretty darn good. I was pleased, and my parents were pleased. We had a good holiday. I think I finally became an adult on that day. I found some amount of self-confidence, and I began doing more. This was fortuitous because my parents’ health was on the decline, and I soon assumed the role of caretaker. I think in the end, both my parents were glad I was no longer afraid of stoves, washing machines and lawnmowers.