Thankful For The Craziness

Thanksgiving is a time when we are all reminded of what we have to be thankful for. It's also a time when we are reminded that our families are a little bit crazy. Every single year when I return to my parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner my attention is drawn to a bunch of little eccentricities that I have spent the last eleven months forgetting about.


For instance, each time I come back home I am given my mother's home office to use as a bedroom. Every year the key to that office is on the same pegboard. Every time I'm here I put the key back on that pegboard. Every year I'm told that I didn't put the key back on the precisely correct peg. I'm always a few centimeters off. This is a huge source of frustration for my mother. As far as I'm concerned all eight pegs on this rather small pegboard look the same and I can't even begin to imagine how you could miss a key that is less than an inch away from the peg that it's apparently supposed to be on. It's not like there are a lot of other keys on the board and furthermore the key in question is on a very large, very bright orange keychain. You simply can't miss it.  And yet my mother is sure that if the key is on the wrong peg she will never find it again...even though she's always the one who immediately notices it being in the wrong place which means that she DID find it...but I digress. My mother also is the most disciplined eater (and has the smallest appetite) of anyone I know. Last year I had to spend an enormous amount of time convincing her that one yam was not enough for 7 people.


And then there's my stepfather who is...not handy. Actually that's an understatement. Today when I called to see if my parents had any D batteries in the house for a certain remote control toy my son was bringing over my stepfather was the one to answer the phone. My mother has kept the batteries in the same place for the last 30 years, it's a place my stepfather of twenty years was apparently completely unaware of until today's phone call. Once he knew where to locate them he excused himself for a moment to see if there were any left. He came back to the phone a minute later to tell me that yes, there were indeed batteries in the house. "Are they D batteries?" I asked again. He paused before saying hesitantly, "They're Duracell."  


And let's not forget my brother who spent a lot of time last year texting me while I was eating my Thanksgiving dinner. That in and of itself isn't a big deal...except we were sitting next to each other at the same table while he was sending the texts. And of course there's my son who is so picky that the only part of the Thanksgiving meal that he usually ends up eating are the bread-rolls and the fruit salad (assuming there are no melons of any kind in the fruit salad and no seeds on the rolls). I'm sure I have plenty of quirks that drive the people at our family table crazy too...but like the rest of those in my brood I choose to be in denial over any and all of my abnormalities.


And yet I love coming home for the holidays. I enjoy and to a degree even admire my mother's perfectionism and my stepfather's conversation (which is always focused on people and society and never on technology or gadgets). My brother's texts make me smile, the very fact that he can't stop sending them makes me laugh. My son's refusal to eat the food served at our Thanksgiving meal means that there's more for the rest of us...which is good because there's probably only going to be one yam.


I'm grateful for my family's brand of crazy. I wouldn't want them to be totally normal. I wouldn't want to be the only one of my friends who didn't have a wacky-family-Thanksgiving story to share. And the mischievous kid inside me gets a kick out of the way my mother stomps her foot when I put the key on the wrong peg. These are the things that make Thanksgiving fun.


Here's hoping your Thanksgiving is filled with love, laughter and just enough insanity to keep things interesting.


-Kyra "Fashionista Fatale" Davis