Scenes from Thanksgiving
by Bill Shein

No doubt the madness is well under way.

As you sit with this newspaper in your hands, trying to relax with your morning cup of coffee, there's surely one family member — a hyper-organized spouse, perhaps? — racing around the house screaming about traffic and did you move the car seats to the minivan and is the cat inside and don't forget to get the pies out of the oven and will those kids turn off that new Xbox and put on their shoes and get into the damn car already?

Ahhh, Thanksgiving. Could there be a holiday period whose early hours are more calm and relaxing?

The folks at AAA say that 37 million of us will travel more than 50 miles from home this week. However, what AAA's statisticians can't possibly calculate is the number of person-hours spent driving in uncomfortable, angry silence after someone misses an exit or a kid won't stop kicking the back of a seat — even under threat of "I'll pull this car over right here, young man!" — or, after 90 minutes of highway driving, those pies in the oven are suddenly remembered.

Of course, after the relief-filled arrival at Uncle Mike's house, unpacking of gear, plentiful hugs and kisses, and apologies for the promised-but-forgotten pies, there's the requisite 24-minute discussion of the trip just completed: Details about traffic, fighting kids, crazy drivers, and how if people would just stop rubber-necking at accident scenes everyone's travel time could be reduced by half.

Then comes the annual football game, complete with near-certain odds that a 50-ish relative, loudly boasting to "still have the speed of someone half my age," tears a hamstring or blows out a knee and ends up in the emergency room — which, by the way, is filled with dozens of 50-ish, once-a-year athletes with torn hamstrings and blown-out knees, all nodding a sympathetic nod as each new member of their humbled Thanksgiving fraternity limps through the hospital's sliding double doors.

At some point the Thanksgiving "dinner" begins, though the start time of this annual family meal continues to creep inexplicably toward sunrise ("Turkey-flavored breakfast roll, anyone?").

Next up is the mock argument over who will carve the turkey. Will it be Uncle Mike, who, since last year's bird-carving accident, has been called "Uncle Nine Fingers?" Surely everyone will agree — after some playful ribbing — to give him another chance, except for the one unlucky soul still recovering from last year's terrifying mouthful of turkey, cranberry sauce, and fingertip of Uncle Mike.

At some point the family's resident left-wing radical, perhaps home from sophomore year at UC-Berkeley, laments — and rightfully so — the environmental impact from factory farms where turkeys are raised, and then suggests that Native Americans, their land stolen and their ancestors massacred by manifest-destined Europeans, don't have much to celebrate today.

Such a pronouncement, of course, leads to a raucous argument made worse when someone says, "America, love it or leave it!" or "Mmmm, this dead turkey is delicious!" and someone is called a fascist and someone else a communist and things escalate until Uncle Mike, as pater familias, holds up both hands and says, "I'm going to count to 10, er, nine, and then I want this to end."

So as dessert is served — thanks to a bakery found open on Thanksgiving — calm descends, apologies flow, and family unity is restored.

Eventually, belts are loosened and trouser-top buttons released from buttonholes. Someone sleeps soundly on the couch, snoring perhaps, while conspiring relatives laughingly discuss what to write in lipstick on the sleeper's forehead. In the living room, everyone under 25 happily settles in, slack-jawed and droopy-lidded, around this location's Xbox.

At that moment, as we look around our homes filled with imperfect but loving families, and ignore our stomachs' gurgling request for antacid, the day's theme of giving thanks deserves a long, robust embrace.

But not too long an embrace: There's all that homebound traffic to start worrying about.

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Like you, Bill Shein is thankful for friends, family, peace, love – and
Xbox.

(This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper on November 23, 2005. Join a discussion about this column in Bill's blog. And read Bill's previous column, "Holiday Season Do's and Don'ts").