People say divorce wounds the children involved. I suppose it does, but in all honesty, remarriage is what really fucks them up. And in honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday I would like to share a Thanksgiving memory made possible through the magic of remarriage. When I was 14 my Dad got remarried, to a woman he had been dating for about 6 months. In retrospect, had he spent a little more time wrestling with that decision he probably wouldn't now be on his 3rd marriage. Having dated for only six months, I had only met this woman twice before my father and I moved into her house, with her two boys (she was divorced from a cardiologist, and got the house. The house really was nice.) I met her two sons only once, on a Sunday afternoon for a few hours, before we all became one big, dysfunctional family. When I arrived at her house that Sunday afternoon her sons were not yet home, and my step mother- to- be took a moment to share something with me. Her older son had a bit of a problem with his mouth, and if I ever felt the need to solve a problem with him physically that was ok. I stood in stunned disbelief, and just as my mind began to accept the idea that this woman had just invited me to kick her sons ass my father pulled me aside and told me sternly never to do this. Talk about mixed messages! One thing was clear, either this woman was totally insane, or her son was really that obnoxious. Over the next 13 years I learned that both were true.
And with that bit of background I bring you to the first Thanksgiving dinner we all shared. My grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin joined us. I knew this was a disaster in the making when I saw what my stepmother was cooking. She came to this country when she was 15 from Germany, and presumably knew what traditional Thanksgiving fare consisted of. She chose to abandon this for salmon-almond mousse pate, among other things I had never heard of. My family was coming in from Northern Wisconsin and rural Indiana. If they had known that coming up with a turkey would be a problem they would have shot one themselves. Still, the strange food could have been overcome, but my older step brother could not.
We sat down to dinner with my father and step mother at the head and foot of the table, my family lining one side and my step brothers and I on the other. My older step brother was sitting to the right of my father, perpendicular to him. As the meal progressed, my step brother's comments became more and more inappropriate. I could see me family trying to catch me eye with the strangest looks on their faces, my father looked uncomfortable, his mother mortified. As for myself and my younger step brother, well.....we loved every minute. We ate our bizarre food and felt the tension in the room grow in what my theatre professor would refer to as rising action, the precursor to the climax.
That climax came when he made a comment about his mother deep throating my father. No shit. And instantly, while everyone else sat in shocked silence, my father (sitting perpendicular to him) punched him square in the jaw. Clearly, my step brother had never had taken a shot to the jaw before (it wouldn't be his last) and I'm not sure my father had ever thrown a punch before (though he threw that one like Evander Holyfield). My step brother sat there for a moment, then jumped up, grabbed his plate, and took he off. He grabbed his Domino's cheese pizza off the counter and retreated to his room, where he spent the rest of the evening. (A note about the pizza, he may be the pickiest eater I have ever met, but really, given the shit the rest of us were forcing down, he did all right getting himself a pizza. The rest of us had been watching him eat it, like, can we do that? I didn't know we could do that.)
My family didn't spend the night, I'm not sure if they had ever intended to, but they took off as soon as was polite. Our first Thanksgiving was a harbinger of things to come, and while we had many instances far more tragic and inflammatory, few spawned such hilarious memories.
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