jobob
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
A Story Without Me 17: First Thanksgiving
Notes: Happy Thanksgiving, even if you're not an American! Welcome to my "I don't feel well, and driving conditions aren't good, so I'm home posting fan fic on Turkey Day" Festival! Thanksgiving still is my favorite holiday. Every country, not just the U.S. and Canada (which celebrates Thanksgiving in October, eh?) should have a Thanksgiving Day. It can be a very nice party. You don't have to dress up, you start buying presents the next day, there's lots of food ... and if your company, like mine, gives you the next day off work, then you get a four-day weekend! Detroit contributes a lot to America's Thanksgiving celebration. First, Detroit has a big Thanksgiving Day parade. Then, as every sports fan knows, the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving afternoon. Not that the Lions play football very well ... but seeing the Lions play every Thanksgiving since 1934 is as traditional as eating pumpkin pie for dessert. There's a little sex scene and a little kissing in this chapter, but it's not explicit, and if you blink, you'll miss it.
Shameless Plugs: Read my Journal. Play Fast Cars in Boston and Cleveland!
Disclaimer: This is fiction. I don't know Bono. I wish I knew Bono. If I did (and if I felt better today) I'd invite him over for some turkey, veggies, white wine, and pumpkin pie. And stuffing.
Back in August, when your family got together to celebrate your birthday and meet B, you invited everyone over to Thanksgiving Dinner at your house.
"Please, everyone, come to my house for Thanksgiving! It'll be B's first Thanksgiving! It'll be fun!" you said over dinner that August Sunday.
Now that it's the day before Thanksgiving, it's snowing outside, you don't have enough dinner plates and silverware, you need a folding table and chairs so you'll have enough seats for everyone, you hope the turkey defrosts in time, and Emily still hasn't returned your voice mail about making pumpkin pies, you wonder if you'll have any fun this Thanksgiving after all.
To top it off, B's been sick with something that's going around his office. He's been achy, tired. He's hot one moment, chilly the next. That big (yet adorable) nose of his isn't too stuffy, but only because you've given him cold and flu medicine. He's in bed, hot and cold under the covers, with his favorite James Joyce novel. You could barely read "Ulysses" in college lit class when you were well -- you don't know how B can concentrate on it while he's ill.
"Sweetheart," he tries to yell from the bedroom to the dining room, "would you bring me some chicken soup and Kleenex?"
"Yes, dear," you yell back as you look in the cupboard for a can of Campbell's and a bowl and spoon. "I'll bring it to you, and then I have to go back to the store."
****
It's Thanksgiving Day morning, early. You're awakened by your sick spouse. Except he sounds healthy again.
"Happy Thanksgiving, J!" he says, spooning you.
"Happy first Thanksgiving to you, B! Are you feeling better, love?" you ask him.
"Oh, yes, thankfully. Let me show you." Before you realize his meaning, or before you can protest, he wraps his strong arms around you. He begins to feel you, kiss your neck, and make love to you.
*****
When you go downstairs -- you to start roasting the turkey and preparing vegetables, B to have breakfast and start watching the TV coverage of the Thanksgiving Day parade in downtown Detroit, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from New York -- B looks out the window.
"I'm dreaming of a white ... Thanksgiving." he sings. "When did it snow?"
"We got three inches of snow yesterday. We usually don't get so much snow so early. Traffic was a mess all over the city. I'm glad it's stopped. But it's going to be cold all weekend. And the roads may still be bad."
B sees the table you set yesterday. You set it (and the card table you borrowed from Angela) with paper plates and napkins and plastic wine glasses and cutlery from the party supply store. Granted, they're heavy paper plates with a beautiful fall design on them, and fancy strong plastic silverware. But they're paper plates, paper napkins, and plastic silverware and glasses. For your first big family dinner party as a married couple. You wanted better, much better.
"I'm so embarrassed. I wanted to set a beautiful table for you and my family, I really did. But when I called the department store to ask when they were shipping our wedding china to us -- you know, the china pattern I picked out after we got engaged and people bought as our wedding gifts -- they said our pattern is backordered. Our flatware is still in some warehouse in New Jersey. And why did you tell me not to register for any glassware?"
"I told you not to register for glassware because we're going to Ireland next month."
"Yes, and?"
"We can tour the Waterford factory and buy crystal directly there. My relatives may even give us Irish crystal for wedding presents."
"That's great, B -- but our guests need wine glasses today. We don't own enough wine glasses for a dinner for 12. I don't have good china to entertain with, and I know you want us to entertain our family and friends and your business associates. I have enough place settings of white plates and silverware for a few meals for the two of us and a few guests, but that's it. When Mom died, I inherited this house -- but Steve took the family 'good china' away from me, the only girl, and claimed it for Dru, his wife. 'You'll never use it,' he had the nerve to tell me. Well, when he sees this table today ..."
"You'll have your own fine things soon, J," B tells you. "Besides, no one will have to wash dishes this way."
*****
Joan arrives early to help you cook. "Oh, the roads are awful, be glad you're home." She's brought a vegetable tray and cheese. You put it next to the chips and salsa you've put out for a pre-meal, football game snack. "Thought I'd bring you something for people to snack on. How's B? Still sick?"
"He's feeling more like his old self again." You smile. "He's in the living room, watching his first Thanksgiving parades on TV."
"I think I just saw Emily! And Jenny, with a bunch of other people, along the parade route!" B yells from the living room.
"Well, Emily won't be making me a pie this morning," you tell Joan.
****
Your phones ring. You pick up the kitchen phone. "Aunt J?" It's Emily.
"B just said he saw you on TV at the parade route! You must be so cold out there!"
"Yeah, I am. We went to Jenny's this morning. We were going to try to get into the Windsor bars last night for 'bar night,' but we got stuck in this huge traffic jam yesterday outside of Ann Arbor and crashed at Mom's apartment near the airport. We woke up at 6, bundled up, and then went to the parade. We've got her friends, my boyfriend, her boyfriend, and this guy from her building out here. I'm so cold, but it's fun. We wanted to invite B, but Grandma said he was sick. Could you put him on?"
"B! Pick up the living room phone! It's Emily!" you yell to him.
B talks to Emily for a short while. "Of course, you can bring Josh! I have to find out just what sort of young man is dating my niece, don't I? ... What time does your mother's flight get in? Oh, it already has? Of course, she can come over, we'd love to see her! Bye, Emily, enjoy the parade!"
"Did you just invite two more people to dinner?"
"One of them happens to be your sister, if I'm not mistaken, who will need to eat and relax after two long days of helping holiday travelers fly from Detroit to Orlando and back. And haven't you been saying we'll have enough food to feed an army?"
"You're right, she is family. However, 'we'll have enough food to feed an army' doesn't mean you can start recruiting an army, B!"
*****
Steve and Dru walk in and see your dining room table, set with fine paper and plastic.
"You don't have any good china?" she asks you.
"No, I don't." You bite your lip.
****
More people arrive. Your Aunt Joan and Uncle Jeff. Joan helps you cook, while Jeff and B discuss Monday's stunning announcement of major layoffs among auto workers at the "G" division of GFC Motors starting in 2006. They're not just getting rid of people and factories in Michigan this time, they're doing it all over the country. Even at the big, new, model-for-the-rest-of-the-industry factory which built your car. "The timing of this announcement couldn't have been worse," B says. "Three days before one of your country's biggest holidays? One month before Christmas? I know it's end-of-calendar-year and they're in bad shape, but for fecks sake!"
After the girls and their boyfriends come from the parade (and, yes, Emily made pies for you last night), your doorbell rings. A flower delivery van is in the driveway.
"Sign here," the deliveryman says, handing you a clipboard and a pen. After you sign, he hands you a paper-covered bundle. You carefully open the paper, to find a fall-colored floral centerpiece, with a card: J: Thanks for everything. Love, B.
As you carry the flowers to the table, you bend to kiss B on his cheek. "You're quite welcome, B," you whisper into his ear. "Thank you."
*****
The Lions are losing, 0-10, to the Atlanta Falcons, at the start of the first quarter, when your (step)sister Sue arrives, still in her flight attendant uniform, with two other people.
"Look who I met in the driveway," Sue says.
"Dave! And you must be Sibohan!" you say, hugging them both.
"We had a few days off in Montreal from my book tour. We called B, and he invited us to fly over for the party," he tells you. "The advantages of having a private jet."
*****
At halftime with the Lions being shutout 17-0, you turn off the halftime show -- you've never liked Mariah Carey but you're taping it for anyone who does -- gather everyone around the tables, and sit everyone down to the big, traditional dinner.
B, of course, is at the head of the table. As a little joke, you bought him a paper Pilgrim hat to wear today. To your surprise, he's wearing it. Along with his red tinted sunglasses. Your modern Irish Pilgrim speaks.
"Today is my first Thanksgiving here in America. I'm very happy and thankful to be here today, with you and with my wife. If it wasn't for her, why, right now I'd be watching the Lions game with strangers in some pub. Or worse." He laughs. "I'm told the Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving because they were thankful for their first harvest and their arrival in the New World of America. It wasn't easy for them, and it hasn't always been easy for me. But, I'm thankful I'm here. May we all remember to thank God for what we have, and remember those who lost so much this summer. Bless this food, and may God bless you all."
*****
Everyone's finished eating. Once again, you wonder how it takes so little time to finish a meal which takes so much time to prepare.
"Who would like some pumpkin pie?" you ask everyone. "B, would you like to help me make a pot of coffee and slice the pies? I could use your help in the kitchen," you wink at him before he can say oh-no-I'm-full.
"Time for your very first piece of pumpkin pie, honeybee," you say, when you're alone, standing in the kitchen, as you cut him a small slice of pie and top it with whipped cream. "Now, it may seem odd to make a pie out of a squash, but it's really very good." You put the fork of pie in his mouth.
"Mmmm, that is good. May I have some more?" You feed him more pie.
"Oh, B, you have whipped cream just above your lip." You move to kiss it off. Then, the pie forgotten, you keep kissing.
"We'd better finish serving the pie to our guests," you say when your kisses end.
"Oh, right. Pie. Guests." B says, suddenly remembering.
*****
The rest of the day and evening is a happy blur of conversations, football (first the Lions, then the Cowboys), card games, B playing chess with Emily's boyfriend, Emily and Dave happily jamming for your guests. Washing and drying pots and pans (but not plates and silverware) in the kitchen. You and Siobahn discuss weddings and your men.
And a few women take you aside to give you their condolences -- and tell you their own stories of losing babies.
We thought you might have been pregnant, they tell you. Why didn't you tell us? I lost a baby, too. I'm so sorry.
****
Around 8 p.m., almost everyone's gone. Except for Dave and Sibohan who are staying in your guest bedroom at B's insistence.
B yawns. Poor guy -- eating all those carbs and that turkey and drinking wine and beer today made him tired.
"Want to turn in early, B?" You wink at your husband.
"Just so I can be at Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. tomorrow and save money on Christmas presents? No, thanks!"
"You'd rather sleep in, then?"
"Well, you know I am an early riser."
"Good. Target opens at 6 a.m. They'll even give us a wake-up call. Good night, B!"
"Good night, J. God bless you. I love you." B walks towards the bedroom.
*****
You wake up Friday morning feeling queasy and achy.
"B, I don't think we're going Christmas shopping this morning after all," you tell your spouse. "I feel sick to my stomach."
"Morning sickness?" he asks hopefully.
"No, I also have chills, aches, and a stuffy nose. Just like you did."
"Where did you put the cold and flu medicine?"
Notes: Happy Thanksgiving, even if you're not an American! Welcome to my "I don't feel well, and driving conditions aren't good, so I'm home posting fan fic on Turkey Day" Festival! Thanksgiving still is my favorite holiday. Every country, not just the U.S. and Canada (which celebrates Thanksgiving in October, eh?) should have a Thanksgiving Day. It can be a very nice party. You don't have to dress up, you start buying presents the next day, there's lots of food ... and if your company, like mine, gives you the next day off work, then you get a four-day weekend! Detroit contributes a lot to America's Thanksgiving celebration. First, Detroit has a big Thanksgiving Day parade. Then, as every sports fan knows, the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving afternoon. Not that the Lions play football very well ... but seeing the Lions play every Thanksgiving since 1934 is as traditional as eating pumpkin pie for dessert. There's a little sex scene and a little kissing in this chapter, but it's not explicit, and if you blink, you'll miss it.
Shameless Plugs: Read my Journal. Play Fast Cars in Boston and Cleveland!
Disclaimer: This is fiction. I don't know Bono. I wish I knew Bono. If I did (and if I felt better today) I'd invite him over for some turkey, veggies, white wine, and pumpkin pie. And stuffing.
Back in August, when your family got together to celebrate your birthday and meet B, you invited everyone over to Thanksgiving Dinner at your house.
"Please, everyone, come to my house for Thanksgiving! It'll be B's first Thanksgiving! It'll be fun!" you said over dinner that August Sunday.
Now that it's the day before Thanksgiving, it's snowing outside, you don't have enough dinner plates and silverware, you need a folding table and chairs so you'll have enough seats for everyone, you hope the turkey defrosts in time, and Emily still hasn't returned your voice mail about making pumpkin pies, you wonder if you'll have any fun this Thanksgiving after all.
To top it off, B's been sick with something that's going around his office. He's been achy, tired. He's hot one moment, chilly the next. That big (yet adorable) nose of his isn't too stuffy, but only because you've given him cold and flu medicine. He's in bed, hot and cold under the covers, with his favorite James Joyce novel. You could barely read "Ulysses" in college lit class when you were well -- you don't know how B can concentrate on it while he's ill.
"Sweetheart," he tries to yell from the bedroom to the dining room, "would you bring me some chicken soup and Kleenex?"
"Yes, dear," you yell back as you look in the cupboard for a can of Campbell's and a bowl and spoon. "I'll bring it to you, and then I have to go back to the store."
****
It's Thanksgiving Day morning, early. You're awakened by your sick spouse. Except he sounds healthy again.
"Happy Thanksgiving, J!" he says, spooning you.
"Happy first Thanksgiving to you, B! Are you feeling better, love?" you ask him.
"Oh, yes, thankfully. Let me show you." Before you realize his meaning, or before you can protest, he wraps his strong arms around you. He begins to feel you, kiss your neck, and make love to you.
*****
When you go downstairs -- you to start roasting the turkey and preparing vegetables, B to have breakfast and start watching the TV coverage of the Thanksgiving Day parade in downtown Detroit, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from New York -- B looks out the window.
"I'm dreaming of a white ... Thanksgiving." he sings. "When did it snow?"
"We got three inches of snow yesterday. We usually don't get so much snow so early. Traffic was a mess all over the city. I'm glad it's stopped. But it's going to be cold all weekend. And the roads may still be bad."
B sees the table you set yesterday. You set it (and the card table you borrowed from Angela) with paper plates and napkins and plastic wine glasses and cutlery from the party supply store. Granted, they're heavy paper plates with a beautiful fall design on them, and fancy strong plastic silverware. But they're paper plates, paper napkins, and plastic silverware and glasses. For your first big family dinner party as a married couple. You wanted better, much better.
"I'm so embarrassed. I wanted to set a beautiful table for you and my family, I really did. But when I called the department store to ask when they were shipping our wedding china to us -- you know, the china pattern I picked out after we got engaged and people bought as our wedding gifts -- they said our pattern is backordered. Our flatware is still in some warehouse in New Jersey. And why did you tell me not to register for any glassware?"
"I told you not to register for glassware because we're going to Ireland next month."
"Yes, and?"
"We can tour the Waterford factory and buy crystal directly there. My relatives may even give us Irish crystal for wedding presents."
"That's great, B -- but our guests need wine glasses today. We don't own enough wine glasses for a dinner for 12. I don't have good china to entertain with, and I know you want us to entertain our family and friends and your business associates. I have enough place settings of white plates and silverware for a few meals for the two of us and a few guests, but that's it. When Mom died, I inherited this house -- but Steve took the family 'good china' away from me, the only girl, and claimed it for Dru, his wife. 'You'll never use it,' he had the nerve to tell me. Well, when he sees this table today ..."
"You'll have your own fine things soon, J," B tells you. "Besides, no one will have to wash dishes this way."
*****
Joan arrives early to help you cook. "Oh, the roads are awful, be glad you're home." She's brought a vegetable tray and cheese. You put it next to the chips and salsa you've put out for a pre-meal, football game snack. "Thought I'd bring you something for people to snack on. How's B? Still sick?"
"He's feeling more like his old self again." You smile. "He's in the living room, watching his first Thanksgiving parades on TV."
"I think I just saw Emily! And Jenny, with a bunch of other people, along the parade route!" B yells from the living room.
"Well, Emily won't be making me a pie this morning," you tell Joan.
****
Your phones ring. You pick up the kitchen phone. "Aunt J?" It's Emily.
"B just said he saw you on TV at the parade route! You must be so cold out there!"
"Yeah, I am. We went to Jenny's this morning. We were going to try to get into the Windsor bars last night for 'bar night,' but we got stuck in this huge traffic jam yesterday outside of Ann Arbor and crashed at Mom's apartment near the airport. We woke up at 6, bundled up, and then went to the parade. We've got her friends, my boyfriend, her boyfriend, and this guy from her building out here. I'm so cold, but it's fun. We wanted to invite B, but Grandma said he was sick. Could you put him on?"
"B! Pick up the living room phone! It's Emily!" you yell to him.
B talks to Emily for a short while. "Of course, you can bring Josh! I have to find out just what sort of young man is dating my niece, don't I? ... What time does your mother's flight get in? Oh, it already has? Of course, she can come over, we'd love to see her! Bye, Emily, enjoy the parade!"
"Did you just invite two more people to dinner?"
"One of them happens to be your sister, if I'm not mistaken, who will need to eat and relax after two long days of helping holiday travelers fly from Detroit to Orlando and back. And haven't you been saying we'll have enough food to feed an army?"
"You're right, she is family. However, 'we'll have enough food to feed an army' doesn't mean you can start recruiting an army, B!"
*****
Steve and Dru walk in and see your dining room table, set with fine paper and plastic.
"You don't have any good china?" she asks you.
"No, I don't." You bite your lip.
****
More people arrive. Your Aunt Joan and Uncle Jeff. Joan helps you cook, while Jeff and B discuss Monday's stunning announcement of major layoffs among auto workers at the "G" division of GFC Motors starting in 2006. They're not just getting rid of people and factories in Michigan this time, they're doing it all over the country. Even at the big, new, model-for-the-rest-of-the-industry factory which built your car. "The timing of this announcement couldn't have been worse," B says. "Three days before one of your country's biggest holidays? One month before Christmas? I know it's end-of-calendar-year and they're in bad shape, but for fecks sake!"
After the girls and their boyfriends come from the parade (and, yes, Emily made pies for you last night), your doorbell rings. A flower delivery van is in the driveway.
"Sign here," the deliveryman says, handing you a clipboard and a pen. After you sign, he hands you a paper-covered bundle. You carefully open the paper, to find a fall-colored floral centerpiece, with a card: J: Thanks for everything. Love, B.
As you carry the flowers to the table, you bend to kiss B on his cheek. "You're quite welcome, B," you whisper into his ear. "Thank you."
*****
The Lions are losing, 0-10, to the Atlanta Falcons, at the start of the first quarter, when your (step)sister Sue arrives, still in her flight attendant uniform, with two other people.
"Look who I met in the driveway," Sue says.
"Dave! And you must be Sibohan!" you say, hugging them both.
"We had a few days off in Montreal from my book tour. We called B, and he invited us to fly over for the party," he tells you. "The advantages of having a private jet."
*****
At halftime with the Lions being shutout 17-0, you turn off the halftime show -- you've never liked Mariah Carey but you're taping it for anyone who does -- gather everyone around the tables, and sit everyone down to the big, traditional dinner.
B, of course, is at the head of the table. As a little joke, you bought him a paper Pilgrim hat to wear today. To your surprise, he's wearing it. Along with his red tinted sunglasses. Your modern Irish Pilgrim speaks.
"Today is my first Thanksgiving here in America. I'm very happy and thankful to be here today, with you and with my wife. If it wasn't for her, why, right now I'd be watching the Lions game with strangers in some pub. Or worse." He laughs. "I'm told the Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving because they were thankful for their first harvest and their arrival in the New World of America. It wasn't easy for them, and it hasn't always been easy for me. But, I'm thankful I'm here. May we all remember to thank God for what we have, and remember those who lost so much this summer. Bless this food, and may God bless you all."
*****
Everyone's finished eating. Once again, you wonder how it takes so little time to finish a meal which takes so much time to prepare.
"Who would like some pumpkin pie?" you ask everyone. "B, would you like to help me make a pot of coffee and slice the pies? I could use your help in the kitchen," you wink at him before he can say oh-no-I'm-full.
"Time for your very first piece of pumpkin pie, honeybee," you say, when you're alone, standing in the kitchen, as you cut him a small slice of pie and top it with whipped cream. "Now, it may seem odd to make a pie out of a squash, but it's really very good." You put the fork of pie in his mouth.
"Mmmm, that is good. May I have some more?" You feed him more pie.
"Oh, B, you have whipped cream just above your lip." You move to kiss it off. Then, the pie forgotten, you keep kissing.
"We'd better finish serving the pie to our guests," you say when your kisses end.
"Oh, right. Pie. Guests." B says, suddenly remembering.
*****
The rest of the day and evening is a happy blur of conversations, football (first the Lions, then the Cowboys), card games, B playing chess with Emily's boyfriend, Emily and Dave happily jamming for your guests. Washing and drying pots and pans (but not plates and silverware) in the kitchen. You and Siobahn discuss weddings and your men.
And a few women take you aside to give you their condolences -- and tell you their own stories of losing babies.
We thought you might have been pregnant, they tell you. Why didn't you tell us? I lost a baby, too. I'm so sorry.
****
Around 8 p.m., almost everyone's gone. Except for Dave and Sibohan who are staying in your guest bedroom at B's insistence.
B yawns. Poor guy -- eating all those carbs and that turkey and drinking wine and beer today made him tired.
"Want to turn in early, B?" You wink at your husband.
"Just so I can be at Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. tomorrow and save money on Christmas presents? No, thanks!"
"You'd rather sleep in, then?"
"Well, you know I am an early riser."
"Good. Target opens at 6 a.m. They'll even give us a wake-up call. Good night, B!"
"Good night, J. God bless you. I love you." B walks towards the bedroom.
*****
You wake up Friday morning feeling queasy and achy.
"B, I don't think we're going Christmas shopping this morning after all," you tell your spouse. "I feel sick to my stomach."
"Morning sickness?" he asks hopefully.
"No, I also have chills, aches, and a stuffy nose. Just like you did."
"Where did you put the cold and flu medicine?"
Lovely story jobob can't wait to read more. You have a real talent.
I'm sad over their baby. 
