Getting Over Thanksgiving

When I was a kid, I loved Thanksgiving. Several important events marked the day. First, my family and I would watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning, my mom interrupting her viewing to regularly baste the turkey. Next, we’d watch Miracle on 34^th Street, the film that used to follow the parade broadcast that has now been replaced by the National Dog Show. Then, football would take over the airwaves and my dad would settle into his recliner for a long stay. Mom would call us for dinner in the afternoon (sometimes it was just my mom, dad, and brother; other times, extended family were included at the table). After dinner, we’d all find a place to let our stomachs distend, some on the couch, Dad back in his recliner, and we’d wait for It’s A Wonderful Life to appear on NBC in the evening.

In all, it was a nice day. When I think of those days, I remember feeling crisp morning frost, smelling turkey in the oven, and listening to the parade. It was a day that engaged all my senses, especially those of taste. Turkey itself wasn’t all that interesting to me, but gravy erupting from mashed potato volcanoes suited me just fine. And I loved fondling the ridges in the cranberry jelly that was freshly plopped from the can.

The first time I spent Thanksgiving away from home, I was in London, studying literature. The program I was enrolled in offered its American students Thanksgiving dinner as a treat to keep us from being homesick, but it was a pretty bland affair. Potatoes were replaced by parsnips and pumpkin pie wasn’t even on the menu. Luckily for me, my English grandmother had introduced me to plum pudding as a kid or I wouldn’t have had a clue what that flaming mass of raisin loaf was all about.

Another Thanksgiving away from home also stands out. In graduate school, I visited a friend in Tucson for the holiday. She took me to the Saguaro National Park where I learned that I am allergic to saguaro cacti. Several doses of Benadryl later, my friend took me to a colleague’s home for our Thanksgiving meal. A little dopey on antihistamines, I thoroughly enjoyed my first Thanksgiving in shorts. I’d never experienced a warm Thanksgiving, and it was nice to eat outdoors without long underwear and a parka. After dinner, we all piled into the living room to watch the annual (at the time) Thanksgiving episode of Friends. After 30 minutes of hilarity, our host decided to switch gears and treat us to the adult film channel. Because…..Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for porn? I’m still puzzled over the host’s decision, but whatever. It wasn’t my house.

Since then, I’ve spent most of my Thanksgivings away from home, and I’ve come away from each one feeling a little empty and sad. Sure, I’ve had hosts who were gracious with their time, space, and food, but the feeling just isn’t the same. I’ve even tried volunteering at a local church which serves a community Thanksgiving dinner, but I left there more depressed than ever.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time wondering why Thanksgiving has me feeling so low, and I think there are a few reasons.

First, now that I’m older, I have pretty mixed feelings about the role of the American Indian in our country’s history. Celebrating a day that was the beginning of the end for many indigenous peoples feels pretty uncomfortable. I’ve always enjoyed the television show Northern Exposure’s take on the day. In Sicily, Alaska on Thanksgiving, native Alaskans throw tomatoes at the white people. And the white people take it as a compliment, calling out, “Thanks!” and offering up big smiles. This seems like a healthy way to acknowledge that what happened in our past still informs us now, and we’ve come to some kind of happy medium with our discomfort.

Second, I’m a vegetarian, so the main dish, turkey, is of no importance to me. Of course I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving where turkey was nowhere in sight; in fact, last year’s meal featured bear meat. It does feel pretty weird how jacked everyone seems to get about turkeys this time of year, and I’ve read all kinds of horror stories about how turkeys are bred now to have larger breasts, preventing the males from naturally mating with the females, in some cases. To me, it’s just another sign that the American public is obsessed with breast size.

Third, my husband is Austrian and did not grow up with the tradition of Thanksgiving, so he’s pretty blasé about the occasion. We’ve attended a few festive, turkey-ed up affairs, and I think he enjoyed himself, but he wasn’t wetting his pants over it. I showed him a few of my favorite Thanksgiving flicks, Hannah and her Sisters, Dutch, and Home for the Holidays, and while he laughed at the appropriate places, I could tell he could take it or leave it.

At first, I thought my aversion to Thanksgiving as an adult was a reaction to not seeing my family on the day. And that’s probably a huge part of the day’s overall sadness for me, but I don’t feel similarly about Christmas. I haven’t spent Christmas with my family for years, and we’re all okay about that. When my brother and I graduated from college, Christmas changed, and we all had to learn to make new traditions. At first, we tried tweaking the old traditions, then we threw out the old traditions to try something new, and now, my family is in a good place where the spirit of Christmas isn’t celebrated so much on the day as it is every time we are fortunate enough to spend time together in person. Basically, we all had to do some emotional homework to get over what we thought was sacred about Christmas day.

I miss my family during Thanksgiving, but I mostly I miss what can never be replaced or re-enacted. Thanksgiving will never smell, taste, or sound like it did when I was a kid, and I think, after many years, I’m finally ready to give up trying to reignite those feelings.

So this year, I’ll stop pretending. I’ll stop pretending I’m fine that Thanksgiving will never be the same as it was when I was a kid.

So what will I do instead? I’ll definitely take a few moments on the day to give thanks for my many blessings, and we’ll Skype my family to say hello, but I’ll give in to the feelings of sadness and homesickness, letting it wash over me until, like Christmas day, I get over it.

Apple Trees

This summer I had the opportunity to host my in-laws in the U.S. Notice I wrote “had the opportunity to” instead of “had to” because semantics are truly the only thing keeping me from diving head first into a swimming pool filled with razor blades.

I know I’m being dramatic, but the fact is, I’m a Southerner. I was raised on the notion that, as a woman, I am responsible for serving as the hostess with the mostest when visitors come to town. As a result, our bathroom is always spotless and the dishes (almost always) put away in case a guest should visit our home. When people drop by, beverages are offered, snacks served up, and much alcohol is consumed by me to keep me from following guests around, fluffing pillow cushions after they get up from the couch or dousing the bathroom with air freshener as they exit. When I’m too drunk to get up from my chair, I think everyone is much happier. I know I am.

The reality is that I suck at entertaining. It stresses me out and I don’t like doing it. I know it’s my duty at times, but I lack the necessary interest to turn into Martha Stewart. Whenever I entertain guests, I reconsider my decision to be a mainly cheerful person. If I were grumpy all the time, no one would want to visit us. Or at least, if they did, they wouldn’t stay very long.

But it’s not in my nature to be mean on purpose (except to the Post Office, but that’s another story). So when Peter told me his parents from Austria were going to visit us for two weeks, I put on my game face and helped him plan. This was going to be a very complicated visit, one that required many hours in the car and not enough Xanax for either of us.

You see, Peter’s parents are adventurous. They’ve visited the U.S. before. Peter and his folks rented a car and drove throughout the southern part of America. A few years later, Herbert and Andrea (Peter’s parents) flew from Vienna to Seattle, rented an SUV, and toured around the Pacific Northwest by themselves before visiting us in Montana for a few days on their way to Yellowstone.

This time, it was as though they looked at a map of the east coast and said, “We’d like to see all of that, please.” First, they told us they wanted to visit us in North Carolina with a quick side trip to see Niagara Falls. Peter patiently explained that upstate New York was nowhere near North Carolina and that a two week visit with us wouldn’t include a trip to the Falls.

Herbert and Andrea looked at the map again and decided that they would travel to Cuba first and then fly to the U.S. This time, we had to explain that one cannot easily fly from Cuba to the United States. We again encouraged them to spend two weeks with us at the beach.

Finally, they decided on a two-week long German-language bus tour of New York, Boston, Toronto, Quebec, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. And yes, the tour included a visit to Niagara Falls. We’d meet them in D.C. to tour around for a few days, drive to Roanoke, Virginia so that they could meet my parents for the first time in person, and then drive to North Carolina for a few days at the beach before driving them back to Dulles Airport.

This seemed pretty ambitious, and even Peter was scratching his head at how much time we’d spend in the car. Living in rural Montana an hour’s drive away from a Wal-Mart has prepared us for lengthy car travel, but I don’t think Peter’s folks had any idea how far apart things are in America (spoiler alert: after this trip, they vowed to fly into Raleigh-Durham for their next visit).

As Herbert and Andrea began their bus tour, Peter and I loaded up our car and Gracie the wonder cockatiel and headed toward Virginia. We’ve made this cross-country trip several times and have it down to a science. We generally stop in the same places each year and oftentimes eat in the same restaurants. This year’s pilgrimage began as planned, but things quickly went south when I came down with some kind of gastrointestinal bug. After an unplanned 45 minute stop at an Iowa rest area, Peter found me an urgent care facility that took our insurance and shot me full of anti-nausea medication.

With a queasy stomach and wobbly bowels, I poorly navigated Peter’s drive to Virginia. Our frequent stops along our nation’s highways were reminiscent (according to one friend) of General Sherman’s scorched-earth campaign to the Atlantic. We finally collapsed several days later at my parents’ home, but quickly had to leave for our place in North Carolina to prepare it for Herbert and Andrea. Then we raced back to Virginia to pick them up in D.C.

After our multi-day trek across the continent, two 4-hour long trips to D.C., and three 6-hour long trips to North Carolina, Peter and I calculated that in one month we had spent at least 50 hours in the car.

Keeping illness and endless car travel in mind, you can see why this might not have been my best attempt at hostessing. I valiantly fought D.C. traffic, waited in endless lines at Monticello, and puzzled giant pieces of luggage into place in our small car trunk. Oh, and there was the language barrier problem (I don’t speak much German; they don’t speak much English).

Despite the numerous stressors involved in this visit, Peter and I learned a lot about one another by watching our in-laws. After not-so-patiently waiting for Herbert and Andrea to order lunch (this process took 20 minutes once), I discovered why it takes Peter so long to order a meal at a restaurant. After practically sprinting after my mother as she trotted around kiosks at the mall, Peter learned why I walk like my pants are on fire. While holding a pose for Herbert in front of the U.S. Capitol for five minutes as the sun turned my scalp into bacon, I found out from where Peter gets his tendency to take forever to take a picture. Hearing my Dad call other drivers on the road “buttheads” alerted Peter as to why I have a penchant for calling said drivers “jackasses.”

In short, our appley asses don’t fall far from their trees. And if that’s true for the bad stuff, it’s probably true for the good stuff. Like his parents, Peter is incredibly generous with his time and money. I anticipate his kindness will evolve into the same thoughtfulness that encouraged his folks to bring my parents special gifts from Austria. Like my parents, I value giving my time to my community (Dad’s involved with Boy Scouts; mom sorts books for charity fundraisers), and perhaps one day, I could give more of myself than just a few hours a week at our local hospital.

So really this was “an opportunity” rather than just a “had to” visit. Sure, his folks discovered that I’m a lousy, grumpy hostess, but maybe they also saw a woman who loves their son and his family so much that she’s willing to put her flaming intestines to the wind to make sure everyone gets picked up from the airport.

Sprechen sie Baby?

Being married to a foreigner has its advantages: frequent trips to Europe to visit family, an easy conversation starter with new friends (no, there are no kangaroos in Austria) as well as introductions to diabetic coma-inducing native delicacies sprinkled with a fine dusting of powdered sugar.

But there are disadvantages as well: while Peter’s English is flawless, my German, his native tongue, is decidedly flawed. In fact, it's practically nonexistent.

When Peter and I first met, we had no difficulty communicating. He’s lived in the US for several years, and he has a remarkable understanding of the colloquialistic subtleties that beleaguer the English language. As we shared our pasts with one other, he talked about living in Santa Monica where gang members regularly walked their “pooches” on the boardwalk. I was amazed Peter not only knew synonyms for the word “dog” but also chose a synonym that was a funny juxtaposition to the dominant image of gang members on the boardwalk.

In graduate school, I worked as a literacy volunteer, helping non-native speakers of English practice their conversational skills. Talking with women from Brazil, South Korea, and Afghanistan humbled me. They each spoke several languages in addition to English, and I marveled at their ability to understand the English language’s insistence on word order and article usage.

But I’m no novice at language learning myself. I took five years of Latin during junior high and high school and two years of Spanish in college. I passed exams at the graduate level to show that I could read in both of these languages.

Neither of those exams tested what I need to know today: how to respond orally in German. I can recognize many of the words when I see them (thanks to a year of Anglo-Saxon in grad school), but my listening comprehension is terrible and my ability to respond is worse.

With a few Rosetta Stone lessons under my belt, I can understand a few key words and phrases when I hear them spoken, but I can in no way respond meaningfully. Peter and I Skype regularly with his parents, and I generally sit there, nodding and smiling. They could be talking about various ways to sell my organs on the black market, and I would probably smile and make yummy noises.

The first time I visited Peter’s family in Vienna two years ago, I hid away in our bedroom until meal times. Peter, the ever-dutiful son, helped his mother carry dishes into the dining room, leaving me to make conversation with his father, who speaks about as much English as I do German. We found common ground over beer, but we finally did away with meal-time niceties and started bringing our dictionaries to the table. We looked up words for the items in the dining room as well as the food on our plates. Thanks to Peter’s dad, I know many words for place settings and various kinds of salt (Austrians add either salt or powdered sugar to ALL their dishes).

Other than Peter’s immediate family, I didn’t interact substantially with other German speakers during that trip. Peter limited our schedule to visiting tourist spots where English translations were offered in written form, and he took care to order for me at restaurants.

I enjoyed my visit immensely, and when I learned we were to return to Vienna this past Christmas, I fired up the Rosetta Stone lessons with a renewed vigor that lasted about a month. Life, as always, intervened with its barrage of job responsibilities, and German lessons got put on the back burner, so I returned to Vienna this past month, two years after my initial visit, with still only a tiny bit of German in my repertoire.

This time, Peter decided I should be thrown into the deep end, and he scheduled visits with some of his old friends and extended family. At first, I feared the awkwardness of these events, but I learned two things:

First, I realized Ich spreche Baby (I speak baby). Children (especially those under five) don’t care that I can’t speak; they just wanted me to play dolls or cars or whatever with them. Though five-year-old Gretchen was frustrated at having to repeat her instructions for the proper construction of her Lego castle, we still managed to shore up the building site with fences and an alligator on top of the turret.

With each visit, I found myself gravitating toward the children so that I wouldn’t feel pressured to make conversation with their parents. In turn, the kids showed off their toys (which are EXACTLY the same as American toys), and enjoyed the numerous sound effects I was able to produce. The parents liked that I was spending time with their children, and Peter was happy to get a word in edge-wise.

This leads to the second thing I learned. I discovered a lot when I focused on understanding what other people were saying, knowing that I could in no way respond. Anyone who’s spent time with me knows that I can dominate a conversation (it’s a really bad habit), especially when my husband and I are together at an event. When the language was German, I could only listen attentively and let my husband guide the conversation (which he did quite expertly when I’d shut my pie hole).

 

Not learning my husband’s language has put me at a disadvantage in many ways, especially with regard to getting to know his family, but my ignorance has shown me the importance of listening. In my overly articulated life as a professor, I spend a lot of time talking but not nearly enough time listening.
 

So the next time I visit Austria, Peter’s family may ask, “Spechen sie Deutsch?” to which I will shrug, “Nein. Ich sprech Baby.” And amid the puzzled looks, I’ll produce a rubber ducky and perhaps My Little Pony, and I’ll show them how baby drool is a universal language.

 

So long as I can provide a bib or an obliging sleeve to eliminate puddles, I’m gold.

Why I Hate Poetry Readings

If one were to look at my Facebook updates posted during these past summer months, one would believe that I had a nice summer. I posted pictures of Peter and me at our beachside condo, lounging by the pool, reading for fun, chasing down the Italian ice vendors, etc. And for the most part, it was a pretty great summer. Except for one thing. 

I got fired.

Let me rephrase that. I was replaced by a colleague to do a job I was forced to do in the first place. But, yeah, mostly, I was just fired.

You see, the way things work at my university, department chairs serve with no pay or course reduction. Chairs essentially coordinate the efforts of the department while attending endless numbers of meetings as the “voice” of the department. Why would anyone want such a job? I didn’t. The job was foisted upon me because in my small department with only (at the time) four tenure-track positions, one person had already been chair, the other person refused, and the newest person had only been on the job for less than a month.

That left me. I should have run the other direction.

I was resentful and bitter all last year. Sure I called regular meetings, set agenda and took minutes, took care of three new part-time adjuncts, ordered new equipment for department offices all the while teaching 24 credits and trying to work on my book, but I did it all (except for teaching) grudgingly.

Throughout the year, I tried to face problems head on. When I found out that a colleague was talking about me behind my back, I went straight to the culprit and asked him to consult with me directly if he had problems with my leadership. When I tried to hire someone to teach a class and was faced with administrative roadblocks, I sat down with the administrators and asked what to do. When I was told that I had done just about everything wrong that I could have done wrong to hire this person, I took my lumps and apologized publicly. 

Honesty, I thought, and forthrightness, would be the best way to communicate effectively with my colleagues. (Those of you who are in academia can see the naiveté in this thinking, but I thought I was blazing a trail of open communication here).

And maybe my honest communication policy would have worked if I had been honest with my feelings about the job in the first place. I deeply resented being punished with this additional service load my first year after being awarded tenure. I wanted to recuperate from my tenure application year and recharge my batteries so I could start my book.

I wonder what would have happened if I had just said all of this before taking on the position. But I didn’t, and I trudged unhappily through the year.

The problem came when I wrote a negative review of an instructor’s class (I even wrote this grudgingly, begging the instructor to let me sit down in conversation with him rather than committing to paper my evaluation). Said instructor went crying to an administrator, threatened to quit, and within a day, I was replaced.

Ironically, the administrator who fired me, did so via telephone as I was standing in a grocery store, three thousand miles away from Montana. It felt surreal to be fired while standing in the chips and dip aisle, and it’s truly a wonder that I didn’t rip open a bag of Tostitos and just go for it right then and there.

I’ve never been fired before, and I have to admit I didn’t handle it well. I vacillated between being incredibly angry at this perceived injustice to finding it a hilariously ironic that I’d been fired from a job I really hated. I know at some point that I’ll be grateful at this turn of events, but I’m not quite there yet.

Mostly I’m just embarrassed that my colleagues think I’m really bad at something. I was brought up to try my best and give my all, and for the most part, I think people see me as a hard worker who tries to be better than just competent. Being fired, however, labels me as incompetent.

So as I pick up the pieces this fall, I’m integrating a few new things in my life. I’m taking piano lessons for the first time in twenty years, and I’m learning to speak German so that I can communicate with my in-laws in more depth than simply making yummy noises while I eat strudel.

But I’m also still trying to practice honesty, this year, for myself. For too long I have held on to resentments because I didn’t want to tell the truth. So ladies and gentlemen, here it is. My first in a series of truth-telling columns:

I hate poetry readings.

There. I said it. It’s really hard for an English professor to own up to this, but I have attended at least a hundred poetry readings in my life, and few of them made me want to do something other than throw myself under a bus.

Here’s my problem with poetry readings. I teach a class called The Oral Tradition. In this class, we read The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Beowulf. We study methods of oral composition and storytelling, and I, along with my students, am always fascinated with how oral storytellers performed their work. Storytellers didn’t memorize the whole of The Iliad; they couldn’t. So they memorized stock phrases and names and retold the story as they remembered the basic plot elements. And they didn’t just tell the story: they PERFORMED it because they were essentially composing on the spot! In hexameter! Now that’s talent!

Today’s poetry readings focus on that: reading. Performance is not often part of the occasion. Instead, I silently die inside as I listen to someone labor over each precious word, pausing from that affected, pretentious reading voice that makes me want to hold the poet down and tell her ugly things about the world.

I honestly believe I would react the same if Shakespeare himself were just reading his sonnets. It’s poetry in performance (read: As You Like It or Taming of the Shrew) that really melts my butter.

And of course, that’s the irony of all this. My bread is literally buttered by the study of poetry. My B.A. and M.A. theses focused on poetry as did my dissertation. I love teaching students how to scan a line of poetry, unearthing its meter, and how to recognize alliteration, assonance, consonance, and all those great sound devices that can make words sing.

And the thing is, I really love reading poetry. I like seeing how a line breaks, where white space infiltrates stanzas, how a slant rhyme performs on the page. I like reading a line out loud to myself over and over so I can roll its sounds around on my tongue. I have read Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” aloud to myself dozens of times and cried each time, thinking about misspent youth. In my head, I recite parts of Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” while I wait in line at the grocery store (though not so much on the day I got fired).

And I can see the value of poetry readings in the university setting. Our students spend a considerable amount of time composing poetry manuscripts for their senior theses, and they should have an outlet for sharing their work.

But I still hate poetry readings.

So how do I plan to use this revelation in this year of being honest?

I plan to say “No thank you,” the next time I’m invited to a poetry reading. There’s no reason to be rude to the inviter, but I’m also not going to be held hostage by poets anymore. 

That’s a really funny image, isn’t it? Being held hostage by poets. Yet the power poets have had over me is tremendous. Not anymore. Like Plato, I’m expelling poets from my republic. Well, at least from the part of my republic that is reserved for activities that don’t make me want to rip the ears off my head.