Thanksgiving

This will publish after we celebrate.

This bit of writing surprised me. It came whilst the cousins played, my husband lay passed out on our bed, and my youngest patted my leg. I began without knowing where it would end. I was liberated as the pieces come together. I am curious, will it make the holiday less unbearable?

These are the things I write.

A cold sore has erupted on the right side of my bottom lip. I wondered two days ago if one would appear. We’re hosting Thanksgiving for my husband’s family. It came in a different spot than the place I thought I felt one two days ago. This one popped up so fast I thought it was an allergic reaction to the Greek food I ate for lunch. I treat myself to dining in on the days I clean the house. Today it took six hours. I didn’t clean the half bath off the kitchen. I did ten loads of laundry. I enjoy getting everything done in one day. It gives me the rest of the week to watch it all fall down.

I hold in the right side drawer of my desk exactly six rolls of exposed but undeveloped film and a disposable camera. I became obsessed with the tri-x disposable camera this summer at a photographer’s retreat. A retreat I’m desperate to attend again but won’t be able to. I’ll be traveling in an RV with my husband and his family across the US.

We’ve hosted the meal of gratitude more times than we’ve attended. We cooked it in a tiny piece of shit oven on an island in the Caribbean during medical school. We filled the apartment with two grand tables pushed together to make one giant square. My friend brought gorgeous decor from the states and we gathered around and ate Turkey my husband brined all day. The table clothes were white and we hand wrote the place cards. We circled around sharing what we were grateful for. We were 22 and 27.

I got my first cold sore when I was thirty. Until then I was a cold sore virgin. But I decided, at thirty, I wanted to be a film wedding photographer so I needed to create styled shoots - staged shoots with copious wedding details to be published by wedding blogs to make a name for myself. It wasn’t college, living in a foreign country, or birthing four children. No, it was the stress of a styled shoot that popped that cherry. THey attacked my nose first. LIning the inside of both nostrils. Then my lips and finally the inside of my cheeks before my doctor husband acknowledged I had a problem.

Cold sores tend to emerge slowly. You sort of feel them tingle under the surface first then a small little sphere beneath the skin. Often you only notice it because your lip bumps up against the other lip evoking a small but unmistakable kind of pricking pain. That’s when you know to take the medicine. The medicine can’t make the cold soar go away, but it stops whatever microbials from multiplying which saves you from the horror of the entire life cycle of a cold soar. I’ve taken three doses as of this morning. Twenty four hours to dinner and somehow the thing is four times the size it was yesterday. Medication be damned.

The rolls of film in my drawer hold pictures of my 90 year old grandmother. I remember attending her home twice for Thanksgiving. Once as a young child and once as a college student. My mother expressed her concern about my weight at that Thanksgiving. She was right. I was starving myself. I loved the way my body was shrinking.

Most of our Thanksgivings happened at my other grandma’s house. It was dark with brick tiles in the kitchen and plaid carpet in the basement. We ate on her fine china and used real silver. They cooked the stuffing inside the bird. My grandfather stood at the end of the table and carved the turkey Norman Rockwell style. Or maybe that only happened once and I’ve been searching for it ever since.

The year that grandpa died we weren’t together for real Thanksgiving so my uncle hosted a second less formal Thanksgiving. I piled on the stuffing. I don’t know what made me do it. We never said it but I couldn’t not. I randomly hugged my grandpa so tight and told him I loved him. He squeezed me back. Then he took a trip to Israel and came back in a box. We buried him before Christmas.

I used to love Thanksgiving more than Christmas. It felt like the underdog holiday. The lesser. The insignificant. I loved it because it was simpler. No gifts. Less fanfare. Just amazing hot food around a table that ended in incredible conversation.

We aren’t together anymore. No stuffing cooked inside the bird. It isn’t safe to eat it that way. No real silver. Grandma is dead. Grandpa is dead. The house is gone. Renovated into oblivion belonging to strangers. No plaid carpet. No bookcases filled with The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and Shakespear. I hate it. I hate it so much I could punch that damn turkey and drown it in its own gravy sauce. Jokes on me, it’s already dead. Pile on the poultry, the potatoes, the stuffing. Eat so much it hurts then fall asleep to the sound of nothing.

It will be two weeks of nursing this cold soar. In expansion it will burst wide open and ooze for days until it finally bleeds itself into a scab. Then one day it will just not be. I’ll be able to kiss my children again. Wear lipstick again. Feel no more numbing pain in that corner of my lip. I guess I’ll send my film to the lab on Friday, or wait until Monday so no holiday or weekend delay.

Truth isn’t easy. Still I try.