Thanksgiving Past: A November Tale

Thanksgiving with my wife’s extended family was a tradition already, though we’d been married only five years or so.  It was hard for my folks to rationalize having the holiday with us when attendance rarely reached double digits at my mother’s house.  We ate dinner with the Holland side of the family on Black Friday and split the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

I couldn’t have felt better about the way things were turning out.  My wife, Kathy, was among the first in her generation to marry and have children, but the others followed shortly behind her.  The Thanksgiving gathering was full of newlyweds and newborns, so the focus was no longer on my wife and I, or our growing family.  As far as we were concerned, that was just fine.  Content just to supervise our daughter, Lucy, in the basement, I anticipated another delicious meal as the smell of roasted turkey wafted down the stairs.

The basement was dominated by a full-sized pool table, nicely balanced and lighted.  Lacking in any appreciable skill, Lucy would spend a fair amount of time just rolling the balls across the felt, watching them carom off the bumpers.  I hoped they would announce dinner fairly soon, as when Lucy got bored, she would want to play a real game of pool.  Though I was thirty years older than she, I wasn’t particularly good at the game either and it could be tedious trying to throw a game to a child who never sank any shots.

My brother-in-law came down the stairs in the nick of time, getting ready to tell me the potatoes were being mashed, so it was time to grab your Chinet platter and queue up for the buffet.   But the words never got out of his mouth.

“Wanna play pool?” my sweet-faced pre-schooler asked her uncle.

“No, not now.  We’re just about…”

“Come on,” interrupted Lucy.  “Don’t be such a pussy.”

Until I saw my brother-in-law’s face at that moment, I wasn’t aware eyebrows could go that high.  I, on the other hand, needed to rig a strap to my jaw to wench it up off of the floor.  Lucy’s loving and patient uncle just turned around and headed back up the stairs, sparing me the need to explain.

Of course, there was only one explanation.  I wasn’t going to ask her, “Where did you hear that kind of language?”  I knew it was me, she even said it the same way I did, though (of course) I hadn’t known I was being overheard. 

Before we went upstairs, I sat her down and told her that the words she had overheard me using, and had herself used perfectly in context, were unpleasant words that bothered some people.  I asked her not to use them again, while prefacing she had done nothing wrong, that it was my fault she had heard those words in the first place.  When I asked her if she understood me, she responded, “Okay, okay.  You don’t have to get pissed off about it.”  I realized then that a lot of Benedryl would become part of her night-time rituals.

We proceeded up the stairs and made generous plates of food, supervising the feeding of our daughter as well as a five month old son.  When we had finished eating and the children returned to their play, my wife had betrayed no sense that she knew what had happened downstairs.  Because Kathy is very close to her younger brother, I figured I’d better get in front of the problem, so I made a clean breast of it, spilling the whole story.  “Are you mad?”

“A little,” she answered.  Before I could apologize, she continued, “I mean, Lucy’s only four years old.  He could have beaten her in five minutes.  He was being a pussy.”  That’s my wife, the one who keeps her head when those all around her have lost theirs.

As Thanksgiving rolls around again, we will again sup with my wife’s extended family.  There are few children and fewer babies, so most of us content ourselves with supervising fat grams and carbohydrates instead of our offspring.  My brother-in-law visited us this summer and will be unable to make it for Thanksgiving, so we won’t be able to re-hash the events of that holiday so many years ago.  And for this, I am thankful.

That doesn’t make me a pussy, does it?

Going Out With Flash

Flash was an adoptee, a foxhound mutt brought in after the short two-year reign of Dean, the sweet-tempered but ultimately brainless animal, who departed this mortal coil on the fool’s bet that his skull was harder than a Ford Explorer.  I speak of a dog, of course…any other pet is merely an accessory.

He was already named…twice.  He bore the abysmal moniker of “T-Rex”, so named by the people who adopted him at eight weeks and were surprised that a puppy would be rambunctious with a pre-schooler.  The energetic pooch was returned to the Humane Society at the age of nine months, housebroken but psychologically damaged.  When my wife and children went to meet him at the shelter our daughter thought he took off like a flash, and it stuck.

He came in the back door and immediately parked himself at my heels, seeking my approval.  It’s a tough place to be, especially when you’re appealing to a guy who thinks he’s already had the best pet ever.

His name was Brooklyn.  He came to us from my brother, who had incorrectly read his apartment lease and learned only after buying the black and tan shepherd mix that there was no way he could keep him.  He dumped him on my parents and told them to keep it, or give it to the humane society.  Half-assed attempts at finding adoptive families were made, but ultimately it only took one look at his heart-shaped face and you were a goner.  He slept on my bed until I married and fell further back in the pack when my children were born, but he was never less than a perfect companion.  I had him put to sleep on a Christmas Eve when the vet told me his pain would be off-and-on for the rest of his life, but mostly on.  There were treatments available that would do little more than make me feel better, but friends don’t do that to friends.

I was a tough nut to crack, having buried two animals in the previous three years, but Flash didn’t give up on me.  Because of his abandonment, he was a needy animal.  Maybe he saw something in me, or maybe it was because I frequently smell like chicken. He won me over, though I’ve always been kind of a sucker when I think somebody needs me.  He now answers to any number of names, Flash, Flashy, Flash-a-Bibble, Bibbs, Mr. Bibbs, or Bibbsy.  Oh, we call him Big Head, too, though if I call that name out both my dog and my son will come.

It was on a visit to the veterinarian’s office this spring when I learned that Flash, now twelve, had cataracts and was already beginning to lose his sight.  We had noticed that he’d lost a step in the speed department, slept a bit more than he used to and could clear a room with a fart like any number of other old men I have known, but going blind was not on our radar.

Wondering what the future held with a pet whose vision was gradually dimming was difficult to ponder.  He loved to chase small game in the back yard, rarely getting anything but a Squirrel Nutkin catcall from a branch just out of his reach.

It seems like fate now, when the lawn mower broke down.  My wife and I planted a large patch of wildflowers in the middle of our back yard.  They would grow to be a good three-feet tall and remain colorful until the end of June when we would cut them down.  This year however, when it came time to clear the patch, the blades of the Toro were silenced and the parts would have to be ordered…it would be weeks before I could complete the chore.

While my son borrowed a neighbor’s mower to cut the front yard (so we could hold up our heads when we saw the neighbors), we left the back yard alone, as we had had little rain and the growth was not out of control.  One night after work, I saw movement in the flower patch.  Flash didn’t see it, but he heard it.  He crept closer to investigate.

Nose to the ground, he rooted slowly through the mini-forest, one step at a time.  It wasn’t more than five minutes later that he had flushed a rabbit, chasing his quarry until it disappeared into a thicket.  Even after he lost the race, Flash’s tail slashed the air, the thrill of the chase making his heart pound and his ears perk up.

Every night for weeks, Flash would put off the reason he had come outside for a leisurely stalk through the former flower garden, getting a good chase more often that not.  Something those rabbits loved to eat was still thriving in there, long after the daisies had lost their petals.

We’ve cut all of that down now.  I still take him out every night and he’ll occasionally spy a straggler running through the yard. Again, there have been no casualties, but like an old man bouncing grandchildren on his knee while he thinks about his own children as babies, I think Flash feels young again for a few minutes. 

I’ve even noticed he is having more of those hunting dreams, where the legs move in a running motion and he yelps just the way he does when he’s on a hunt.  In some ways, he seems younger than he did this spring, having re-discovered his ancestral purpose.  Or maybe he knows that, on this end of his life, it’s me that needs him and he’s decided to stick around a little longer. 

Whatever the reason(s), every night after dinner you can see Flash and I, two old dogs, our noses to the air, savoring the scents that ride the late summer breezes.  We can enjoy each other’s company for a little longer as we walk the freshly-cut back yard, grateful for an old, broken lawnmower.   
 

Please consider these other items written and/or performed by Marc Holland:

Live performances at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/itzajoke

Three plays co-written with Mike Davis-

Crenshaw Family Reunion 

Beauty and the Deceased

Night of the Livid Dad (one-act)

One play co-written with Kathy Holland-

Warren’s Peace

Are  all available at:

http://www.histage.com/searchplaycategories.asp

Coming Soon: A new one-act co-written with Kathy Holland-

Jobbed

Will be available at:

http://www.writersamuseme.com/plays.htm

Novels under the pen name Quentin Tippler-

Hats Off For Homicide

And Coming Soon:

On the QT: The Collected Short Fiction of Quentin Tippler

Are for sale at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=quentin%20tippler

Novels under the pen name Carl Stafford-

Son of Mann

And Coming in 2014:

Grandsons of Mann

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=carl+stafford&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Acarl+stafford

Putting Our Toys Away

Clichéd though it may be, I recently found myself in yet another discussion about “Desert Island Movies”, that collection of films you would hypothetically take with you to a place where there would be nothing else to watch. Of course, your own choices are light years better than anyone else’s, though there are always a couple of titles others come up with you wish you had included, as well as a few on your own list you are forced to defend.

Wait…did I say “light year”?  Or Lightyear?

Yes, faithful reader, I am hopelessly in love with the trio of  Toy Story movies.  Yet until this recent debate, I hadn’t really given much thought to why these films are so hard-wired into the pleasure centers of my brain.  Certainly, in the dawn of Pixar’s technological leaps, the animation alone was reason to marvel at the screen spectacle that was the original release.

That wasn’t the only reason, however.  It was also the first movie we took our three year-old, first-born daughter to see.  Heading there, it was tough to describe the movie-going experience as anything other than “a giant TV on the wall”.  Lucy probably thought that was pretty cool.  After all, in 1995, giant TV’s on the wall weren’t everywhere, and certainly hadn’t been seen in our living room. 

The seamless story, along with the voices of veteran actors giving life to characters who weren’t real (but were a damn sight closer to real than Bugs Bunny), caused our daughter to emote through virtually the entire film.  She fretted, she worried, she cheered, she stood through the entire movie.  We should have gotten part of her admission charge refunded…after all, she never sat in the seat we paid for. I’m not sure I saw the movie until we purchased it on videocassette…that first time, I watched Lucy.

The second chapter of Toy Story came along later, now equipped with a Cowboy and Cowgirl, which mirrored the change in our own lives.  This time our little boy, Daniel, joined Lucy.  Our eldest child was a little jaded by this point, but the story did not fail to bring the kid out in all of us.  A couple of years later, Dan performed in an elementary school talent show dressed in chaps and a wide-brimmed hat, singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” to his delighted fellow students and a room full of parents and teachers.  Sincere and sweet-faced, he brought the house down when he spun his gimmicked lariat as he walked off the stage.

Between the second and third installment, Lucy was caught in a nasty storm on a Girl Scout campout, an ugly tornado that brought wind, torrential rains and death to an area of rural Michigan.  Heeding their vows as Girl Scouts, Lucy and her troopmates herded their panicked fellow campers into safe buildings, past fallen branches and downed power lines.  Throughout the entire ordeal, she nervously rubbed a talisman in her pocket, a small fast-food giveaway Buzz Lightyear she’d absently picked up off of the ground.  The two-inch figurine sits atop the hutch where I write at this moment, his salute as crisp as ever, his devotion to duty resolute, left here to watch over us and keep us safe from harm.

Left here I say, because Lucy is in college now.  As Toy Story 3 came out, our world had changed again. Our daughter away at the University of Michigan and our son busy with his high school activities and friends, my wife and I saw the most recent installment alone.

The latest movie ended with the toys repurposed and placed into the hands of new children.  My wife, who is not as prone to emotional breakdowns as me, had tears leaking from her eyes at the end. I, of course, was worthless.  But this silly little trio of movies was a pathway through our years as parents.  It was our time now to be repurposed, to go from teacher to mentor, from philosopher to sage, from parent to grandparent.

If someone should tell me a few years down the road that another Toy Story movie was  in the works, I think I will be elated.  I’m practically getting a Woody just thinking about it.


 

Please consider these other items written and/or performed by Marc Holland:

Live performances at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/itzajoke

Three plays co-written with Mike Davis-

Crenshaw Family Reunion 

Beauty and the Deceased

Night of the Livid Dad (one-act)

One play co-written with Kathy Holland-

Warren’s Peace

Are  all available at:

http://www.histage.com/searchplaycategories.asp

Coming Soon: A new one-act co-written with Kathy Holland-

Jobbed

Will be available at:

http://www.writersamuseme.com/plays.htm

Novels under the pen name Quentin Tippler-

Hats Off For Homicide

And Coming Soon:

On the QT: The Collected Short Fiction of Quentin Tippler

Are for sale at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=quentin%20tippler

Novels under the pen name Carl Stafford-

Son of Mann

And Coming in 2014:

Grandsons of Mann

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=carl+stafford&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Acarl+stafford

You Think You're Sick?

Are you a hypochondriac, or someone who likes to call in sick a couple of times a month?  Worried that your excuses are getting stale?  Have you used nearly every ailment or injury listed in your battered Physician’s Desk Reference?

Don’t worry about a thing!  I’m here to help.  Listed here, free of charge, is a list of sicknesses or conditions guaranteed to be new to your beleaguered bosses and co-workers!

1)      Cranial Cooties

2)      Prolapsed Nostril

3)      Dislocated Eyebrow

4)      Sema (when your ejaculate begins to taste like a defunct malt beverage)

5)      Coca-Colitis

6)      Wandering Pancreas

7)      Ring-Around-The-Collarbone

8)      Chicken Breasts (you’ve suddenly started growing feathers on your torso)

9)      Sprained Nipple

10)  X-Meningitis

11)  Floppy Lung

12)  Shakespearean Incontinence (To pee or not to pee, that is the question)

13)  Rubber Ankles

14)  Inverted Spleen

15)  Liver Slivers

16)  If-I-Had-A-Hammertoe (Like a regular hammertoe, but condition can only be alleviated by folk music)

Enjoy!  Print off this page as a handy-dandy checklist, and Happy Sick Day!