....Thanks living

The holiday season is approaching. Actually according to the commercials and stores, Christmas is here. I have had mixed emotions over the last couple of days of what seems to be the slow evaporation of Thanksgiving. The child in me still yearns for the Thanksgivings full of food, laughter, and fun. That child yearns for "home". In reality, that "home" is gone and that child has created her own "home" which is somewhat bittersweet. Sadly, my mother and her mother died within 1 year of each other, they were the most important and influential women in my life. They were total opposites, but they had one similarity....an insane love for the holidays. Since there is no "home" to go visit to recreate those beautiful distant memories, and there is not enough alcohol or drugs available to assemble together what is left of my dysfunctional family, I try to create my own.

Last year, we spent Thanksgiving at an Ihop. I was quite disturbed at first. The Divas were in heaven. They practically had the whole restaurant to themselves. As I sipped my coffee, I was comforted by their giggles. There was no dysfunction. Holy hell....was I happy and at peace? I did feel as if I were cheating the Divas. They needed the turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, and a game of  Life to be complete in the world. They needed the homemade rolls, the pear salad, and the "good silverware" aka as the forks that stabbed the back of my throat. They needed the hams, and the pies, and the German chocolate cake. My mother's mom, my grandmother or as I called her my "Maene" managed to create a spread for years that could feed the entire community. I would watch as she scolded her three daughters, one being my mother, for giggling during prayer or sneaking a pinch of the caramel cake. It was seriously like fucking Camelot on that side of the family...surreal. From that side of the family, I got my ability to recreate some shit that would make Martha Stewart tear up. I have baked, cooked, hosted, and decorated some pretty fabulous fucking feasts trying to get a hint of that fix that I long for only to realize that after half a bottle of wine, I am pissed and frustrated. One year, I looked around at the attendees of my pieced together family and friends and realized the main characters were missing. No matter how hard I tried the ingredients I needed the most were unattainable.

Thank goodness, in my childhood, I was also exposed to my father's side of the family who offered something totally opposite from Camelot. My father's side offered a variety every year similar to Christmas Vacation. Barbeque..chicken...turkey and maybe even pizza were items on the menu. The only two things that were constant: the out of the box "sock it to me cake" and a 5 hour game of Spades. My father's mother aka Grandma Alice is still alive and a firecracker to say the least. She had a stroke in the 80s that left her "different". Some years (mostly around the holidays) she was blind in one eye and some years she wasn't. Some years she was apparently "paralyzed" until it was time to jump out of her chair to claim that my grandfather wouldn't touch her anymore and she was going to die the following Friday. My grandfather would kindly reply while playing spades..."Awe, Alice, nobody wants to hear that shit." And I would giggle and somehow my heart was warmed by the behavior.  From that side of the family, I got my ability to recreate a comedic act that Richard Pryor would laugh at.

"Thanksgiving is the day when you turn to another family member and say, 'How long has Mom been drinking like this?' My Mom, after six Bloody Marys looks at the turkey and goes, Here, kitty, kitty." - David Letterman

Both families gave me two polar opposite pictures of Thanksgiving. A fairy tale and a comedy. I consider myself blessed to have had those two. When I am not trying, searching, or longing, I see a glimpse of both sides recreated in my everyday life. The scent of pecan pie or a good ole "nobody wants to hear that shit" reward me with the memory of "home". The "home" that takes up residence in my heart and my soul and where it must stay because as stated earlier the ingredients have expired.

The SBF finally decided a couple of years ago that the dysfunction was just not worth putting ourselves through....especially being that no one on my side of the family really drinks. BLASPHEMY!! I swear I think we would all get a long a little better if every one had a bottle of wine or too. For the second year in a row, I will not be up till 4 am cooking a fucking ham with pineapples and cherries strategically placed on it. I will not be at our local grocery store asking a random stranger how the hell do you cook a frozen turkey the night before Thanksgiving. I will not be up making my favorite sweet potato casserole. Awe......the infamous sweet potato casserole: one year, the oldest Diva came to me on Thanksgiving Eve and told me there was a "toon toon" on the floor. Well, "toon toon" is what we call our privates in the Davis household. Bewildered, I asked her numerous times..."What? Where?". Each time she innocently responded "there is a toon toon on the floor". Flustered, I grab her sweet little hand and asked her to take me to the toon toon. As I walked, I thought about all of the SOBs I would call the SBF that day for leaving out his "toys". I was shocked when she pointed down to a pecan half on the floor and looked up me with the a huge smile. "See mommy, there is a toon toon right there." Chopped pecans are obviously an important ingredient in my sweet potato casserole. Pretty fucking hard to cut up a bunch of pecans without thinking about toon toons. Toon toons everywhere. Pecan halves are no longer allowed in our house. Oreos are not either, but that story is for another day.

So, this year, we are eating at our local church that is serving the community. Once again, I was all like "Shit. What am I doing with my life?" I felt the internal struggle resurface on whether I am cheating my Divas again. I then remember I am chasing something that just cannot be and if I continue chasing that "home", I won't reap from the beautiful "home" I have now. My Divas will have various memories of many different types of Thanksgivings and I pray the varieties give them a
spark about them. A spark that will enlighten them, comfort them, and nurture them. I have many years to screw their lives up and I just can't let myself believe that eating pancakes on Thanksgiving will be the topic on the couch at their psychiatrist's office. If so....those bitches are pretty lucky. Confession: some days, I do dream of the Divas coming home on Thanksgiving with their families and the beautiful feast of food, flowers, cakes, cookies, wine, music, and games I will present to them and then the circle of life will be complete. Giggle.......

I wonder if Thanksgiving has lost it's appeal to some of us because we are yearning to recreate the impossible or that families are less "cookie cutter". Is it too hard for us to say, those memories were great, but they are not my current reality? Or my family is fucking nuts and I don't feel like being bothered? Basically..."It is what it is". Maybe we have all bought into what it should be and have rejected what it truly is. For one day, you are suppose to put aside all of the skeletons in the closets, feast, and avoid drinking too much and cussing out your uncle. There's just food and fellowship...fellowship that can bring up memories both good and bad. Fellowship that can lead to family fights, inappropriate comments, cursing, drinking, medicating, sneaking out to smoke a cig, and vowing never to return....

Unlike Christmas, there are no gifts presented at Thanksgiving to mask the sight of  the empty chair of the loved one that is no longer present or the gifts from the cousins that you only see once a year but manage to get you something that proves you are indeed related and not complete fucking strangers. It's just a time for giving thanks. A thanks that may come out as a "thanks for being a jackass all those years" after that second glass of bourbon. Or "thanks for biting my nipple out of anger over a doll that time when I was seven" which really made breastfeeding go sooooo well. Found this to further support my theory........

Whatever your "story", "situation", or your "home" may be, Thanksgiving should still be celebrated and celebrated for what it simply is. A day to fellowship with whomever...wherever....however and give thanks. A thanks to just living. Plain and simple

So however your Thanksgiving turns out...whether it is good or bad...you are living and that is something to give thanks for and celebrate. Living takes balls. Giggle

"Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often." – Johnny Carson

Cheers and Happy Living!!
  

...he called you a "what"????

Public service announcement: To the little boy that called one of the Divas a "hoe". Your mama is a hoe and I wish I knew her name to relay the message.  Real talk

The above statement may be harsh and tacky to some. I know fighting fire with fire is not something I want to pass down to the three Divas. I know it it best to turn the other cheek and walk away. The problem is how do you teach those values, but instill in them that they have permission to stand up for themselves by any means necessary.

I was bullied from the kindergarten to the 9th grade. I vividly remember pissing on myself while standing in front of the teacher on the playground in kindergarten because I was horrified of two bullies in the bathroom. These girls quite often pushed me, called me names, and pulled my hair. The shame I felt that day destroyed me. Unfortunately, that day was just the beginning. We moved around quite a bit in my early childhood, so I was often the "new" girl. New girls get both positive and negative attention. It didn't help that I was very small for my age and rocked a nice Eddie Monster unibrow.

At every new school, the bullying always started with just name calling and moved on to physical threats and interactions. I was pushed in a fucking locker in the 7th grade and my clothes were thrown on top of the locker. I was also bitch slapped that same semester for getting a girl out in dodge ball. In the ninth grade, a young girl got so upset because I was riding in the backseat with her boyfriend during Driver's Ed. I could see the look of rage in her eyes and I quickly exited the car and tried my best to run to the front steps of the school. I made it to the last step and felt like I had just slid into home base. Until a big ass rock, hit me on the side of my head. Yep, the bitch took a rock and hit me in my head with it.

My father spent countless hours at school because I was hysterical most of the time. Who the hell wants to come to school and get their ass beat??? I remember the principal pleading with me to not call my father one day after a girl knocked my books out of my hand and pushed me into the wall. He called me "Jones" which is my maiden name. "Jones, now don't go and call your daddy and stir up a ruckus. Just go back to class and avoid the girl" he pleaded. I was dumbfounded. The son of a bitch basically said I was the problem. Luckily, they had payphones at school and I called my father. My father came to school that day to whoop somebody's ass and was not going to stop until his daughter stopped getting her ass whooped. My dear grandmother even resorted to giving me a sharpened pencil to stab a little girl at church. This little girl beat my ass literally 6 days a week. My only off day from her was Saturday. Luckily, my mother questioned me about the sharpened pencil I was holding tightly in my hand. She took the pencil away from me and told me once again the words that have stuck with me forever. "It's cause you're pretty and they're ugly". She told me those words over and over again for the 15 years I had her in my life.

The majority of the time, she would add personal information about the family in her pep talk and gave me permission to repeat the information verbatim. And I did. I would walk up to the bully the next day and say word for word what secrets my mom had revealed. "You're just mad because your daddy left your mama for another man." BAM....of course, I would get slapped again and I would run to the principal's office and the whole damn cycle would start over again. I endured hell until I was old enough to get a boyfriend. If I didn't have a boyfriend, I had a shit load of male friends that were willing to beat the hell out of anyone that dared to approach me. I actually became well liked and walked away from high school with many titles: Miss THS, Homecoming Queen, Hall of Fame, Class Favorite, etc.  

The bullying I experienced as a child and throughout my teen years were physical and verbal. The verbal shit that I was told hurt 10 times more than the physical stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't learn how to fight with my fists. I fought with words and I played dirty and hard. To this day, I frighten myself with the words that can come out of my mouth when I feel threatened.

So, I was not shocked when my first response to the little shit calling my Divas a "hoe" was to go straight into a ratchet verbal assault. My two oldest Divas had no idea what a "hoe" was. They just knew it was a bad word. I tried to explain that "hoe" was short for whore and that a whore was.....hell....a lady with a lot of husbands and boyfriends. I know...but it was the best I could come up with. Miss B was listening in and of course started repeating "hoe" over and over again. I'm trying to get her to stop and she's screaming "Santa says it." Shit....I could shake the hell out of the little bastard right now. His mama is such a "hoe"!!!!!!

Fuck, now I feel like a hypocrite. How I will maneuver through the next couple of years will be shocking to say the least. How do you find a middle??? I want my Divas to stand up for themselves. I want them to scare the shit out of someone with their words if they are ever bullied. Confession: they have been given permission to knock the hell out of anyone that touches them. They are small for their size. So, they have been told to fight dirty. 

Seriously, I didn't even know what the word "hoe" meant at their age. So, I worry about their generation. I worry about cyber bullying. I worry about mean girls. I work about shitty boys. 

My job is to protect them, to nurture them, and to build their self esteem. I'll be damned if some little shit messes with that. Mama plays dirty. 

We have an obligation to teach all children that any form of bullying will not be tolerated. I will gladly take on that responsibility one "your mama is a hoe" little prick at a time.