Family Thanksgiving Dinner

Chapter I: Elegant Elephant

I stood outside my grandma’s house and sighed. Thanksgiving at grandma’s was definitely not going to the same this year. This was something I had been dreading since I received the invitation from my mom last month. I tried desperately to come up with an excuse but it was made clear no excuse was acceptable. Thanksgiving at grandma’s was mandatory this year. While coercion is not usually an acceptable invitation, I decided I would go to the house one last time, suffer through the dinner, and pick up what was mine.

I am my grandma’s favorite grandson. Or, at least, I was my grandma’s favorite grandson until her death two months ago. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that’s a pretty lofty claim from a man when his grandma isn’t even around to validate it. You will have to trust me on this fact. I spent a lot of time at my grandma’s when I was growing up and she often would mumble something about me being her favorite. Usually, it occurred when my younger brother was running around her house doing some kind of damage like drawing on her walls with markers or worse. Or when my younger sister would decide to change her own diaper. Gross, I know. Grandma used to babysit us while my mom worked and while my siblings were responsible for causing much of grandma’s gray hair, I was the good child. At least, that’s what she told me. Often.

I had not seen or spoken to any member of my immediate family since grandma’s funeral. And even that was brief. Mom’s coerced Thanksgiving invitation was sent by text. Which I know, doesn’t seem very forceful. Until you take into account she used three exclamation points at the end of her message. Mom doesn’t believe in multiple punctuation for sentences so I knew three exclamation points meant serious business.

Before the funeral, I hadn’t spoken to anyone in my family other than grandma since my divorce 7 months ago. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about my family. They mean well, I think. I’m not claiming that the Alexanders are a family of monsters or anything like that. Do you need to be afraid of bumping into any member of my family? No. They will not harm you. However, if you lost your job and got a divorce within a three-month time span, will they make you feel inadequate and an all-around failure as a human? Probably. At least, that was my case and why I decided to avoid any contact with any of them the for 5 months. And now the two additional months since grandma’s funeral.

My siblings have probably been too busy to reach out. My brother Curtis has been dating Carlie for three years. We assume an engagement is coming soon. Someone nearing the engagement of marriage really doesn’t want to hang out with a recent divorcee. No one wants to be reminded of what could go terribly wrong when they are enjoying being love-blinded. And vice versa. I certainly don’t want to be around happiness and love at this time. Even the thought of it makes me sick.

By some unspoken agreement, we slowly stopped contacting each other. First, the weekly basketball games were canceled. Then the monthly lunches. Finally, even our texts phased out. I just couldn’t be around someone in a healthy relationship and I’m sure he didn’t want to be around someone whose relationship just died.

About the same time, my sister Sam and I also stopped communicating. She was just promoted at work to CFO and with that, her workload quadrupled. Which means, she now has little free time to spend on things like sharing her older brother’s resume when I asked her to do so. I get that it might have put her in an awkward position but she could have just told me that much. Instead, she took my resume and put it… Well, I don’t know where she put it, but she didn’t put it into the hands of the Human Resources manager at her work. I know this because I called to follow up. No one in that office had even heard of me. Instead of confronting her about it, I just let it go along with our communication.

My dad has never been big on communicating. He is a soft-spoken man who spends his free time reading books. The family theory is that because dad is a salesman and has to talk to other people for a living, when he is at home, he likes the quiet. Any communication that needs to get to dad usually goes through mom. I’m pretty sure out of all of them, he is probably the only one that didn’t realize I stopped communicating with him.

My mom on the other hand, takes great pride in being the hub of the family. But I had to take a step back from her when her well meaning support kept missing the mark. “Next time you will know what to do,” was her counsel. “Are you sure you don’t just need to call Mac up and apologize?” While that might have been true if I had done something to apologize for, in this case that advice wouldn’t have helped. My wife, Mackenzie, decided after fifteen years of marriage she wasn’t actually in love with me. She was, however, in love with an old classmate that she bumped into a year ago. So no, I don’t think apologizing would help the marriage. The final blow came when mom offered this gem: maybe if you would have had kids you would have fought harder to save your marriage. Mac and I tried for years to have children but it just wasn’t our lot in life to be parents. We didn’t share all the particulars of our efforts with my family so my mom didn’t know just how painful that last bit of counsel was but it cut deep. Deep enough for me to stop responding to any text from her.

My grandma, she was the one person that didn’t judge me for my failed marriage or my lost job. She let me come to her house and she didn’t try to save me or rescue me. There was no judgment when I stopped by in the middle of the day because I wasn’t working. And she certainly didn’t offer any misguided and hurtful advice. We just sat at her kitchen table and ate cookies and she let me talk about whatever I wanted, which, at least this past year, had nothing to do about my family. Okay, maybe there was a little venting about some members of my family. But she let me vent and didn’t correct me which I think just proves that I am her favorite.

And now that link was gone.

While I don’t intend to hold onto any of these grudges indefinitely, I am clinging onto them at the moment. My brother with his perfect relationship. My sister with her perfect job. My parents with their perfect nonsense. I was still in too much pain to deal with it.

So, why did I allow myself to be forced to this dinner? Two words: Elegant Elephant.

Since grandma was our babysitter and we spent so much time at her house, there was one piece of décor that she had that somehow I became attached to. It was a porcelain elephant figure that stood not quite a foot tall and sat on her bookshelf for as long as I could remember.

The Elegant Elephant was anything but elegant. I would describe it more as the Creepy Elephant. The elephant sat on its haunches and cross legged. It wore a faded pink tutu even though the color was wearing off and only a patchwork of color remained. It also wore a golden tiara on its head and the trunk was raised up. But what caught my attention was the fact the elephant was holding a teacup. Now, out of everything I just described, I can’t tell you why the teacup caught my attention. Why that particular detail is where I drew the line at credibility, I have no idea. But that is what caught my attention as a young boy.

My thoughts all those years ago centered on this one little aspect. How in the world could an elephant hold a teacup with its foot? If you are wondering, I did look up the correct term and yes, elephant have feet not paws or hooves. But getting back to the teacup, the figurine itself solved this small problem by fusing the teacup to the bottom of the foot. The foot was raised up to hold the cup but there was no grasp. After all the time I spent studying this freaky little elephant decoration I determined a real elephant would not hold a teacup with its foot. If anything, it would use its trunk. That would be the more logical solution.

I won’t tell you how long it took me to actually come up with all that because then you would think no wonder the guy lost his job. He doesn’t seem that bright. I mean, any person with common sense would immediately know an elephant would use the trunk not the foot. In other words, the figurine is hideous.

As a young boy, I stared at it for what felt like hours. But as a young boy my timing was probably way off. In all actuality, I probably would stare at it for several minutes at a time. It happened often enough and long enough that grandma did notice. She promised that Elegant Elephant to me. Someday.

Someday was today. That was the pull to get me to suffer through a dinner with my family this Thanksgiving. I was going to pick up that promised Elegant Elephant. It was my only inheritance from grandma. Now, I should mention, I did Google the Elegant Elephant out of curiosity and discovered that ugly, creepy, figurine was made in the late 1800’s. It is actually a collection piece. And it could fetch anywhere from $100,00 – $500,000. Not that I had any plans to sell it, mind you. I’m not that kind of grandson. Grandma left it to me and it is a token of our bond. But I also know, my grandma would want me to be taken care of if need be.

I stood at the door unsure of what to do. Do I knock or do I just walk in? In my hesitation the door swung open and Curtis stood smiling. “Are you coming in, or aren’t you?” his tone was friendly enough and I could tell he was too happy to notice how much pain I was still in.

I sucked in my top lip and nodded my head. Even though she was gone it was still grandma’s living room. The same floral-patterned couch and love seat. The same brown recliner. The same small television. The smell of the cooking turkey overpowered the normal smell of flowery perfumed air-freshener. It was all the same from when I was there two months ago after the funeral. I nonchalantly looked at the bookcase to see my inheritance. Everything was the same except one thing. The Elegant Elephant was gone!