Thanksgiving Regret

Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving will always lie in my memory as a season of regret, winter's somber anthem daring to extinguish any last remnants of life when trees sacrifice themselves to the beauty of crisp moldy orange leaves effect on the human eye. Without regrets we wouldn’t know what we have and so, at least according to my father, the only thing to be thankful for in this life are missed opportunities, that’s what brought this family together time and time again. To start with the Whitesides, kin of my grandfather's sister, had been living off a boarded up two pump gas station for the last twenty years because at least someone in this family of saints was bound to birth oil. Loe and behold it sprouts up like weeds in your backyard. All because my great uncle Jack, a real blacktop cowboy, riding rocking horses since before he could walk broke a collarbone after one too many dances on the wrong end of the horns. There lie his dreams tied up in a would-be failing horse ranch suffocated in sludge. I guess he was always scared of smiling too brightly and risk going up in smoke, that’s humility. Another virtue of the pilgrims they only took what they needed surely, yet we gouge ourselves to comatose in an attempt to forget a time when we weren’t starving. If grandma would’ve never shot, her eye out tracking lonesome doves we’d still be prowling the pasture eyeing a plump fuss and feathers. If dad would’ve never lost his job, he wouldn’t be sitting at the head of this table playing footsie with the floral rug that encompassed the dining hall and scratching out a story in his cranberries and stuffing. Like all the objects we share our lives with they had private meanings. 

No one would deny him the luxury of absentmindedness in such an hour. Let him wrestle with the tablecloth; this is the season of forgiveness after all. If mom hadn't been such a good child she could've become a lawyer, something to pay off the familiar judgmental gaze during a time when a secretary was a coveted profession. However, that isn’t to say being a teacher isn’t such a noble gesture. What of all these people and their shortcomings, surely no one can yet bury themselves in hallowed ground. I’d take care to remember where you come from, you don’t have to be thankful you can live with regret, everyone has a “I wish” somewhere down inside. Though it’s just another missed opportunity to not grow selfish over how far you’ve come from such humble beginnings. Not all caterpillars learn to fly as dad says. What better way to celebrate the season than brandishing your family traditions like a smile. Try being thankful for what you don’t have, all the grief that a life without want or need brings onto the human consciousness. How it drives you into self-loathing in a constant search for more. Please bear with me when I say you are not so great to flee your nest at last and forget the things people don’t say.