So who’s your turkey now?

When I was little, teachers told me that Thanksgiving was a time when the Indians broke bread, or maybe corn, with the settlers who were starving, saving them from certain death.  American Indians were “savages” depicted in our textbooks as running or dancing half-naked and causing a problem for the colonists.  The pictures of the American natives were demeaning at best.  And the text subtly ridiculed them by mocking their belief systems, lack of clothes, and “meager” standard of living.

Today, I shared a different point of view with my students, that of the American Indian, who found European settlers, filled with violence and selfish purpose,  colonizing their land. The “pilgrims” butchered the native people, took their land, and forced them to retreat from their homes.

And all this got me thinking about the narratives we tell ourselves to make us feel okay, whatever “okay” means today.

Thanksgiving for me means cramming everything into a car and driving North for anywhere between four and six hours that morning.  As we inch closer to my husband’s childhood home, I watch the transformation begin from his body position to the words he chooses.  So by the time we’ve reached his parents house, DH is no longer my DH, but the DH who grew up with three siblings in a modest home in a foreign territory.

We enter the house, leaving all our belongings in the car, because “it would be rude to do otherwise” despite the fact everyone knows we are about to shack up on the floor, the couch, and maybe, just maybe, a spare bed.  And did I tell you that this is a modest house?

DINNER, which is supposed to start at 2:00, begins an hour late as we wait for the eldest, who lives five minutes up the road, to arrive.  Then we begin course one of four as a cacophony of conversation breaks out.  I struggle to keep each one straight, and find myself fussing over my son instead.  There comes a moment when I consider my insignificance at this meal, and wish to crawl under the table.  It is at that moment that the jabs from political javelins come from my left and my right at once, and my blood boils.  Just who are these people?  I can’t understand their point of view on issues that light passionate matches in my soul.  JUDGEMENT rises up from my gut and I choose to guzzle some more wine rather than say something stupid.

Course four is dessert.  It arrives after the table is cleared and the family’s favorite movie is shoved into the DVD player.  The kids take the couch, a few playing with toys on the floor, and one by one my in-laws come in and plop down for the two hour show.   It is a comedy.

And I don’t have a fully- developed sense of humor.

So as others laugh ’till their sides hurt, I know who I am.  I am the OUTLAW at my in-laws’.  Tentatively, I glance at the other OUTLAW sitting at the end of the table who is staring at the ceiling.  He looks down, and I try to give a knowing glance, one of empathy, but it falls flat.

Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude.  And I remind myself of that.  But am I a native or a pilgrim?

I know I am grateful for marrying DH and building a life together.  But on these trips, I feel like “a stranger in a strange land” submerged into the Twilight Zone.  And fitting in is the narrative I tell because society expects that it to be so.

But the truth…

JMonell