Saturday, November 06, 2004
The dining hall offers soup. After crapping my pants (which sag now- yippee!) at this discovery I loaded a bowl, fastidiously replacing the lid that some nebish had left open. Then I sidled down the salad bar toward the tuna, to which I customarily add shredded Cheddar cheese (it also complements the soup well). I placed my drink cup in the upper right corner of the tray. Coordinating a balanced lunch constitutes the highlight of the day, because all afternoon I must devote to completing homework assignments before riding the bus to work this evening.
People around campus are touring with their families, as it is Family Weekend and the school hosts Baylor's football team. A girl in the elevator complained to me that, as she has no roommate, her mother stays in the dorm with her. A seven flight ride is too short for me to give the stock "my mother is dead and my father could care less whether I live or die" spiel, so I just laughed with her as though I sympathized. The Father wouldn't put in any sort of appearance, irregardless of distance. For one thing, this weekend marks The Latest Wife's parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, for which they are hosting some shindig at one of their estates. Because The Father places his repute with Terri and her family above all else, I could be laid up in the hospital with a debilitating injury or chronic illness; he would forgo a bedside vigil for an old-people party without second thought.
People who somehow find out express surprise that I am remaining on campus during Thanksgiving. First, I don't have money for plane tickets and The Father won't feel like driving twenty hours both ways; I won't bother asking. But primarily, a tense dinner with The Brady Bunch From Hell is a memory I would like to avoid adding to my banks. Terri can probably cook as well as anyone else, but that, of course, is not the point. If I pass the rolls the wrong direction (from Terri's vantage it must be clockwise), I'll get rebuked with an "oh, you're a silly little idiot" laugh in which The Father will join, which will make me want to murder everyone. I cannot sit in the wrong seat or take the wrong glass. I cannot make jokes unless Terri will find them funny and I cannot tell stories or anecdotes unless Terri will understand them. I'll sit, shovel in the food, and sulk until the nightmare ends.
Thanksgiving should involve a comfortable family meal in which everyone, from me to my socially repressed brother to my attention-starved sister [I won't list everyone] feels loved and welcomed by everyone else. The Father and Terri might have a grand Thanksgiving, but their kids will get left out, if what happened during every regular meal I ate in that house over the summer is any indication. Even if The Father hadn't remarried, Thanksgiving and Christmas especially mean little since my mommy died. Her presence made those holidays, and the only way for me to recapture any semblance of that warmth is for me to start my own family, which is bloody unlikely! I'd have to have children, which would mean having sex, which entails letting someone touch my naked body, which is icky.
I am not bitter. I am not over-dramatic.
I want ice cream.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 11:53 AM]