family fun

The Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot has been a tradition in my family for 25 years. My dad is a hardcore runner and so when I was a kid we would go and watch as he ran the 10K or the 5K. Then we all started participating in the one-mile "fun run" each year, known as The Gobbler. After Dad wraps up his real run, he loops back and joins the whole damn family and 3,000 other folks and we all do the annual walk.

The Guy in the Boxers realized early-on when we hooked up that this was a mandatory annual requirement. If he wants to continue to sleep with me, he must participate. He hangs his head every Thanksgiving morning and reluctantly gets dressed and comes along. We always have to stop for coffee on the way, and he meanders along in The Gobbler, which he calls "The One-mile Mosey" with coffee in hand, admiring the landscape of people's yards (the course snakes through a residential neighborhood) chatting up fellow meanderers and stopping to pat dogs. Every once in a while he will loudly and sarcastically proclaim: "Wow, I really feel the burn now! Gosh, I hope I beat my time from last year!" But I know he would never miss a Turkey Trot. He secretly loves it.

This year, we brought Miss Daisy along for the walk and she was overwhelmed by the smells and sounds and sights. Oh my, what a hoot the morning was. Along the way we saw a group of kids playing bag pipes and a steel drum band and a pot-bellied pig on a leash in someone's yard and dogs dressed as pilgrims and Indians. I mean Native Americans. Or is it Indigenous Peoples?

Anyway, now we are all sitting around thinking about dinner for 22 at my brother's this afternoon. I made four of my famous Key lime pies with real Key limes from my tree.

The political arguments will break out at precisely 4:00 PM and at least one of my nieces will have a tantrum or wet her pants at the table and my size 4 Aunt Sue will comment on the size of my ass at some point during the day.

Dad will have too much wine and become weepy about all of his friends who died in Vietnam and never made it home for any more Thanksgivings and he will say that they were better men than he and they deserved to live more than he did and why did he make it home and they didn't?

One of my sisters-in-law will toss down a few drinks rapid-fire then announce that her husband is screwing around on her and she knows he is up IMing his girlfriend half the night after she has gone to bed. He will take her out in the backyard to calm her down and Uncle Paul will casually bump up the volume on the stereo which is a great idea, since my brother just went crazy with a home remodel job that included wiring every room including bathrooms and garage but we will still hear her scream "You're such a fucking asshole!"

My brother will go postal toward dinner time because he will discover that his wife has gotten rid of one of his favorite serving platters without asking him, since he is a major packrat and she is a neat freak and regularly gets rid of his shit without asking him. "That was Aunt Mabel's vintage Fiestaware!" He will sputter and bark incredulously.

My cousin Gail and I will exchange bitchy raised-eyebrow looks that communicate our satisfaction at the confirmation of our mutual long-held suspicions about the often-asked but deftly evaded question "Who got Aunt Mabel's Fiestaware?" Sometimes my sister-in-law gets away with ditching some of my brother's treasures and he never misses the stuff, but woe to her when he does. It always makes for fun times.

As we all start to finally drift into the dining room, one of the kids will run in and announce that someone stopped up the potty and there is poop water on the floor.

On the way home the GITB will comment about how fucked up my family is at least once. I will remind him that he has not spoken to his father since the huge falling-out after his grandmother's funeral nine years ago and to shut up about my family already. God, I love the holidays.