The Thanksgiving Curse

I’m beginning to think Thanksgiving is a cursed holiday for my family.  The earliest Thanksgivings I remember were great, sure.  Snow, sledding, learning to cook the meal.  The tradition passing down from my mother to my sister and me.

And I remember the first Thanksgiving it all went wrong.  Just, everything, went wrong.  My sister was back home without her husband, it was the first Thanksgiving without her boyfriend- turned- fiance- turned-husband around in a long time.  Wow, since High School for me I think.  And I was in College now.

I just remember no one was happy.  My sister was sleeping against the wall of our eat in kitchen, occasionally waking up to eat before slumping back down again.  My mother had enough at this point.  She cooked all day, really hard, and no one was eating her food and she pointed to my sister and said, “and you won’t even wake up.”  

And yeah, she didn’t.  So my mom went to vent her frustrations outside and I ran after her.  My mother demanded a cigarette out of me.  I had never seen her smoke, but I knew she did before she had kids.  Out of shock, or just dumbed silence, I gave one to her, with a light.  And we smoked.

And that was the Thanksgiving that started our curse.  Where it picked up.  Every year after that, Thanksgiving is one of the worst holidays our family has suffered through time and time again.  The year after the Thanksgiving I just described we had invited friends over.  It was kind of fun, and most definitely awkward as my sister had holed herself up in the basement and refused to even greet them, more or less partake in festivities, cooking, and dinner.

Each Thanksgiving followed one from the next.  Some small inconveniences to major catastrophes always  kept Thanksgiving lively for us.  There was one year when our oven only cooked ½ the turkey.  No, literally, one side of the oven had stopped working and our turkey, therefore, sort of melded between completely done to still defrosting.  But, that was better than when the entire oven caught on fire so I guess one can’t be too picky.  Illnesses sometimes cancelled the Thanksgiving holiday, or a death of a pet.

I’m beginning to see a pattern here.  Maybe a curse? I’m Italian, was one of my original ancestors somehow involved in the “first” Thanksgiving? I mean, the real thing, not the happy one they taught us in school.  Perhaps it picks up when adulthood hits, as, no one wants to punish children, right?  Some kind of Karma from the sins of the… Eh, just something I think about.  There certainly is a pattern I see, but probably reading way too much into.  

But, I have come to determine, this year, we have a cursed holiday.  So let’s rejoice in our curse, celebrate the holiday we know will fall apart, and laugh as we make memories.  And let this be a start to the tally of many Thanksgivings down the line, to watch the curse continue through the family. This is the start, the realization.  The documentation starts here.

I mean, everything stays on the internet and can be updated, right?

Thanksgiving 2016: Maggie dies on the eve of Thanksgiving.  The family has moved so has no money to celebrate.  The parents and one child stay in their new house, the other child is in her apartment, all mourning the loss of their beloved dog.  This is the second thanksgiving they didn’t celebrate together as a family.

Thanksgiving 2017: Not bad. Does a realization of a curse and calling it out somehow disipate power? So much my yearly documentation for generations. Maybe that’s the curse: haha, we decided to make you think you are crazy. So, with the typical “no shit” family quibbles, and the forgotten vanilla ice cream for our pie, all seems ok. We did have the defective turkey, as though the legs were prebroken tied only to the bird by the raw skin, and our accidental forgetting to remove the bacon, it still cooked and tasted fine. I hope it’s not extra for next year. Premptively, I see it as a good holiday. But extra fear for next year. We’ll try to be positive.