Thanksgiving, the Green Bay Packers, Memories, and Realities

By aj -- diagnosed 1995 @ age 37

 

I love Thanksgiving. For me, it is the holiday with the least familial baggage. Just good food—and predictable: always the same food, always good, always too much; good people: family—on or off their best behavior—and Thanksgiving orphans. Thanksgiving almost always meant we were Foster Family for a Day for someone’s friend who had no other Thanksgiving dinner to go to. I remember one year in college, bringing home Lorelei.  Her family lived in Alaska and mine just 200 miles or so south of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where  we went to school. The Greyhound bus we boarded was wet and steamy inside with the breathing of 60 or more people traveling away from the early northern Wisconsin winter. Even those going only so far as Milwaukee felt that they were truly heading south for the holidays. 

Other years, my siblings brought other orphans, and the many boyfriends and girlfriends who were sated and then sometimes sacrificed to my family’s interminable  teasing. The  Barbaras and Bobs, Tylers and Trishas. They came and went and each one ate the same thing: turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce—except for the years that it was forgotten—broccoli, a green salad, carrot-rutabaga puree (fondly known as “smash”), and my stepmother’s famous mandarin orange, marshmallow, and whipped cream “salad.” This so-called salad falls in that category of food you will love if you just try it. Personally, I  could’ve eaten a whole meal of just that—and a slice of turkey, oh, and a small dollop of mashed—oops, well, sure, I can eat that much. Better put some gravy on it. What’s that? There is a ton of broccoli so eat it up? If you insist. That is the way it goes with Thanksgiving dinner. One dish inevitably leads to another until you get to the pumpkin and pecan pies.

It has always enhanced  my sense of continuity, even inevitability, to know that when I was very young, the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers played a televised game of football every Thanksgiving. We lived just outside of Chicago, so you might think we were a household of Bear fans. My older brother was, in fact, a strident supporter of the “Pack”--especially Vince Lombardi’s and Paul Hornung’s “Pack” (the things remembered from childhood: I even know that Paul Hornung’s number was 5 but I don’t know what position he played)). Either out of true loyalty to his team of choice or simply to balance the stakes or just to get at my brother, our father was a Bear fan.

If you come from Illinois or Wisconsin yourself, you probably know that the Bears and Packers have long been rivals. Their games resembled gladiator fights. But, they did not play every Thanksgiving. The years of my young childhood were the Packers’ years of glory, and while they played on Thanksgiving for thirteen years (from before I was born until I was in kindergarten—does kindergarten still exist???), they played the Detroit Tigers each time. (The Packers only won three of those games.)

 Still, my memories seem real,  more real than reality. I wonder how much of me is made up of memories of things that didn’t happen, or not the way I remember them. Oddly, the memories remain fresh and ripe with emotion and that is not squeezed out when history doesn’t bear them out.

We create our pasts this way, from the undeniable facts facing down our memories… No one experiences Thanksgiving  the same way. No one remembers the Packers the same way.

 I remember the Thanksgiving when my stepsister showed up with brand new hair color, a new car in the driveway, wearing a mink coat with a bottle of champagne in each pocket. Where was her reality?

I remember the Thanksgiving when Dad knocked over his glass of red wine and the table sat in shocked silence—no glass of wine of his before this one had ever dared spill. We sat still until suddenly my stepsister  began to laugh. The silence grew thicker, and if ever there was a pregnant pause this was one. It gave birth to everyone’s laughter as my father broke character and chuckled at the reality of his own humanity.

I remember the Thanksgiving we taped the whole dinner on audio cassette to send to my brother in his adopted country, Norway, his reality being 4,ooo thousand miles away.

 I remember Thanksgiving with my new  baby brother  who would grow up in such a different household than the rest of us, a world of money and stability, a different reality that made him a different type of person.

 I remember the Thanksgiving my sister introduced  us to her boyfriend, leaving us to wonder whether he had  in fact driven off the bridge years ago or it had been an accident. I could not grasp his reality at all…a “brilliant” playwright who couldn’t read a watch or find his own way home but could lie so wonderfully he kept you entertained for hours…until you suddenly couldn’t tell his lies from truth and your world shifted unpleasantly.

 I remember the Thanksgiving in Brooklyn, when I had invited family and friends for  dinner and a general day of leisure. The Monday of Thanksgiving week, however, I woke up  too depressed to go through with it. We cancelled Thanksgiving and ate chicken from Boston Market. That was reality.

I remember my first successful Thanksgiving with many of the same family members and friends years before my cancelled Thanksgiving. Once upon a time in Brooklyn, a reality and a half ago…

 These memories make up my life. But are they real? Does it matter? I am thankful for every single one of them.

 Soon, Thanksgiving will roll around again. The only thing I know for sure is what my father and stepmother will be eating for dinner. And the inevitability of that is up for grabs too. My life has no more room for inevitabilities. They take care of themselves.

I keep an eye on reality, which is constant change.