thanksgiving

a subject that i always struggle with writing down.

  thanksgiving. the immediate visual of long and cumbersome folding tables put end to end to seat an entire branch of family. aunts and uncles. cousins and parents. all smooshed together side by side as the great aunt and grandmother skitter about the kitchen as if their very presence infuses some sort of properness to the food being prepared. a flavor of history. tradition.

 

  memories of picking grapefruit off the tree at my uncle’s house in the summer. chasing and being chased by my cousin’s heather and michelle. i remember handling the grapefruit picker, an orange plastic-coated metal claw mounted on a long wooden handle, like a rake gone monstrous. michelle and i, nearly the same age; she, but a few months younger. we spent the day freeing ripe fruit like fishing upside down. running with the joy that only seems generated by preteen hearts.

 

  when the days for grabbing grapefruits off the branch where gone and the yard was heaped up with leaves, we would all leave phoenix in a mass family exodus and head north. thanksgiving was always held at grandmother’s house in payson which, was a two hour drive by highway. after we had eaten our fill of turkey, cranberries, gravy and i had somehow managed to avoid my great aunt’s traditional baked artichoke (which my dad loved) we cleared the tables and played cards. those days we played dutch blitz; a fast paced game that required several decks. michelle was the family card shark and although it’s the sort of game where long hands give an unquestionable advantage;  michelle, with her petite frame, always managed to win hand after hand. she was quick to smile too.

 

  i was too young to understand.

 

  i remember the first time my parents tried to explain it to me as we walked the hilly neighborhood. why michelle couldn’t run more than a few minutes anymore. how this thing, this… “cancer” was advancing and how it made her sick and weak. i remember feeling shocked that she had been sick since she was a young child. i learned about chemotherapy and wigs made for kids. i learned that she may not have long to live. that every year is a blessing.

 

she died at 13.

 

  we don’t have big family thanksgivings anymore. the folding tables stay folded. my great aunt and grandmother have gone up north and divide out a divine deck of dutch blitz. michelle still wins every hand. the eternal card shark. up there grapefruit trees glow a healthy green and orange all four seasons and you don’t need a grapefruit picker to reach the highest branches.

 

  i still don’t understand why life falls out the way it does. why certain things fade and others move beyond reach. sometimes i feel like i’m desperately running, trying to catch up to the past. my twenty year old soul is out of shape and i don’t always recognize what looks back from the mirror. i’m thick with undigested grief, unable to express.

 

  sometimes i imagine her up in her orchard; which also doubles as a safari full of exotic creatures, looking down on me shaking her head full of natural red hair and whispering, “its ok. don’t worry about the words brian. remembering is enough.”

 

  so i remember. and live. and give thanks.

 

Author's Note

this is a 2nd draft. please be gentle. let me know if it flows well and makes sense.

Reviews

[Eunice Crankyponts]

I think this is a nice story. I only noticed a couple grammar and repetitive words. For instance; when you wrote "michelle and i were the nearly the same age, her the younger by a few months." I would have written, Michelle and I, nearly the same age; she, but a few months younger."

Another example, "thanksgiving was always held at grandmother's house up in Payson, about two hours up the highway. " I would write, Thanksgiving was always held at my grandmother's house in Payon which, was a two-hour drive by highway. Write about the anticipation of the gathering during the car ride, too!

Instead of beginning that paragraph with Michelle was a card shark, move that sentence to just after the description of the game you would play. For instance, here is your sentence: we cleared the tables and played cards. those days we played dutch blitz; a fast paced game that required several decks. (insertion) Michelle was a card shark,

It is a tragedy that your cousin passed at such a young age and I am sorry to read. However, I think that you have canonized her here very well.

I know that your story is a rough draft but overall, a very good read. :)

Ericka.....

[April Child]

I have obviously missed the first drafts as this is nice tight piece of writing. Wonderfully comforting reminisce in the beginning paragraphs and then the crunch, sigh... Once you have been touched by loss it's difficult to remember yourself as that person you were before you experienced such pain. It's like being haunted by yourself as well as the memory of the person you have lost or as you so eloquently describe it "Thick with undigested grief" . Lovely piece, bittersweet, very moving.

[Sel Whiteley]

Incredible�that is utterly tear-jerking and so beautifully written. Your grief is so raw and so immediate. I love how you centre the piece around the garden and we only learn later that that garden doubles as paradise. I love those human and humorous touches, the way, it seems, you need your grandmother and your great aunt to infuse tradition and especially, how, she is still winning at cards. This was a beautiful, emotive piece.

[Tara]

wow.no need to be gentle. i am so glad I visited your page today. Been away for a while. This is glorious. It is so tender, so raw , so honest and I , through your words can feel the pain of loss, the beauty you have found within it, which is so evident in this write. That's the thing about loss...it yields great beauty. I am floored by this.One of my favorites from you.

[Raef C. Boylan]

There's something about family bereavement that causes us to write in this fractured, lowercase sentence style I reckon [for me, 'grandad b'].

I still didn't see that coming though, Ragtag, and it hit hard.

Some excellent imagery throughout, e.g.
- "skitter about the kitchen as if their very presence infuses "
- "we spent the day freeing ripe fruit like fishing upside down"
- "doubles as a safari full of exotic creatures"
- "i'm thick with undigested grief"

As regards flow, one or two places where it was interrupted or jarred:

"running with the joy that only seems generated by preteen hearts" - I get what you're saying but think if you could manage to re-word this, maybe condense it down slightly, could work a lot better; the image is your usual genius but the awkward rhythm isn't.

The passage that follows on from "I was too young to understand" contains longer sentences and is less poetic than the others; I don't know whether this is deliberate, as it is here that the tragedy of Michelle's illness begins to seep into the story[?] If not, you could consider shortening some of the full sentences into more disjointed facts and phrases e.g.
"[i learned about] chemotherapy and wigs made for kids".

Overall, great [and brave] work. Thanks for sharing it with us.

p.s. grammar, typos:

"infuses some sort of properness" [I was going to suggest an alternative word to 'properness', but now I'm thinking it's actually quirky and childlike, and thus fitting - plus the word I was thinking didn't quite make sense]

"by my cousin's heather and michelle" [cousins, no apostrophe needed for the plural]

"grapefruits off the branch where gone" [where = were?]

"in payson which, was a two hour drive" [suggest punctuation change:
in payson, which was a two hour drive"]

"where long hands give an unquestionable advantage; michelle" [the semi colon seems out of place because the sentence is unfinished without the second part - maybe leave it for here:
"after hand; she was quick"?]

"whispering, "its ok" [it's]

[Emily B]

I think she hears you remembering -- and smiles. Especially about the winning :)

[turtlegirlluver]

I like this, even for a rough draft it was very good. I didn't notice any mistakes because i was more interested in what was happening. You are a talented storyteller and I enjoyed reading this!

[Ed Hart]

good, straight forward picture...well done...