Conflicts from Thanksgivings Past
By: Terry Barr
Tags: Thanksgiving, Therapy, Nonfiction, Family, The Junction

I keep thinking of a fifteen year old boy on a Thanksgiving afternoon some fifty years ago. For the first time in his life, he would not be eating Thanksgiving lunch at his or any of his relatives’ homes.

He would, with the rest of his family, be dining out at a local cafeteria.

This is a story, in part, about privilege, so let us get privilege out of the way first, so as to recognize it as a real component but also not to privilege it as the main point of the story.

His family was fine; they could afford this outing, and no matter the dish ordered and its relative quality, they would still be full, sated, and more or less happy after the meal when they’d return to their warm, cozy homes.

And sure, there’d be no leftover turkey sandwiches, no lingering aroma of baked dressing or sweet potatoes or pecan pie. No sign of Thanksgiving life anywhere. They’d go to sleep in their respectively clean and comforting beds, after having their warm to hot, soothing baths.

Life would continue wending smoothly despite this alteration in their Thanksgiving reality.

So, privilege granted, noted, accepted.

Back to that boy, though, the one becoming more morose, more bitter, and more determined as the car his daddy is driving nears the afore-mentioned and dreaded cafeteria where, he rightly assumes, the only other patrons will be elderly couples who have no one else to dine with, to cook for, or to join for this precious holiday.

The boy wonders if these other diners wonder why an extended family of seven would decide to venture out to this place when surely there are a couple of able-bodied folk in that company who could roast a turkey and boil some cranberries.

So, this is a public cafeteria, but it might as well be the lunchroom of the nursing home that he visited with his dad a few Thanksgivings before. There, he encountered his great Uncle Moe, a man so out of it that for his lunch, he was being served mashed up bananas which nevertheless came oozing out of Uncle Moe’s mouth onto the bib that the staff had unceremoniously tied around his neck.

The bitterness increases, as does some fear that the boy doesn’t really understand and couldn’t even name were he asked to do so.

The family greets each other as if this is all normal, as if everybody wants to be spending their Thanksgiving meal at a cafeteria. The boy understands that his mother doesn’t want to be here, but he doesn’t understand why his father, his aunt, and his grandmother seemingly do. For nothing the cafeteria serves can come close to the meal his mother traditionally serves, and though it’s work for her, it’s also what she’s always done, what she’s still willing to do. So when someone, likely his dad, suggested/decreed that this Thanksgiving, they’d be eating out, what was his mother to say or think?

Well, shit.

That’s what the boy thinks now and likely what his mother thought then. But she ceded the victory to the father, to his side of the family, and so what that they paid for everything? So what that no one had to wash and dry all those dishes?

So, under protest — though he hardly knew to call it that because despite his adolescence, he rarely staged any sort of rebellion, much less wanted to, except for his rock music and hair length — the boy followed the adults through the line.

And when he got to the meat portion of the line, he ordered a piece of fried fish, the traditional-under-protest-Thanksgiving faire. And some French fries, and a piece of garlic toast, just what his forefathers had in mind ages ago.

His daddy tried to persuade him to get the turkey; his grandmother asked the atmosphere why her grandson was defying the norm. His poor Aunt Carole, who had hosted the last two Thanksgivings — ordering the turkey from the cafeteria, while the boy’s mother prepared and then hauled all the side dishes the fifteen miles to Carole’s apartment — kept her eyes downcast as she continued walking the line.

He said nothing as he reached his place, as he began cutting into the fish, and then discovering that it was mainly a tough fried skin with brittle fish bones inside. His mother noticed, felt something between remorse and anger, and called the waiter over:

“Take this back and give him something else…like roast beef, please.”

For still, he would not accept the turkey.

The roast beef was better.

The day, this holiday, however, was ruined, or at least he felt so.