thursday, thanksgiving

09:00 AM

they are up and around, beginning the cooking marathon for this great holiday. i hear one of them ask, "has augers gotten up yet?" no. i am still asleep.

10:20 AM

showered, asked to use m.e. and m.o.'s hair dryer, and felt high maintenance.

11:00 AM

m.e. is making a cake. she's created some little ugly turkeys out of some sort of food material, and is using food coloring and frosting to create a running track for the turkeys to race on.

"this was a terrible idea," she says.

"c. [the younger brother], do you think these look like turkeys?"

c.'s verdict: "yeah! i see it," and we all laugh.

12:00 AM

s. says, "i can't wait for your mom and dad to get here. your mom's gonna cry, you know that?"

1:00 PM

mom very much cried and dad was very surprised, about as much as you could hope for them to be.

i found it funny how surprised they were that i was able to pull this tiny trick off. i just called our family friends, but you'd have thought i was sherlock holmes (or the mystery-creating-counterpart) based on their reactions.

the venue for thanksgiving is a barn, a structure from long ago (1994, , so not that long ago) and they've customized the hell out of it to make it an event space in their backyard. there's lots of family now here, most of them quite large in breadth annd heart. some very quiet, making me feel too comfortable to be in the room even though my last name doe is the only odd onoe out. i'm appreciative that they all welcome me the way they do.

3:30 PM

i hate losing and we are losing at a cornhole tournament, and against my dad and scott. it makes it even worse. i'm acting like i'm not defeated, and so is megan, when her team also loses to her dad. we hate losing.

the little children are playing on a swing hanging from a tree, and behind them there is not much more than a distant fence, gentle hills, and trees. this is texas and you can hear things. you can look almost to a horizon. the sun sets later, not only because of the geometry of our green earth, but because there are no tall buildings to make it dark any earlier. just barns.

05:20 PM

c. and i (the youngest son) go looking for a football to no avail.

07:55 PM

on the drive home, i discover that colby, the tall, sort-of-not-all-there boy who i see every year at thanksgiving, is recently married to one of the cousins. i thought that he *was* one of the cousins, and i am in a bit of disbelief. my parents say he is not related.

the nice thing about time is that you see people change. i've seen m.e. bring around a half dozen boyfriends, and c.f. has brought around a half-dozen girlfriends. the latter now has a child with his wife, though it was only 2019 when he was dating a now-friend of mine. the former, m.e., brought around another boy, and he seems a bit less wild and more able to pay his own bills. maybe that one will stick, too. i wonder how they see me changing. just noticing the hair? or turning into an elitist new yorker? surely, not.

i pondered this, and remembered a long car ride to oklahoma where i giddily texted my middle school crush. we were inseparable. talked all the time. i remember the long sleeve shirt i was wearing, which happens to be the same one i wore when i asked her out after our last 8th grade class of the day, and i remember thinking that girl was the end-all-be-all.