aosid's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - There is no mention of thanks after Grandpa's hushed Catholic grace. There are a few rushed signs of the cross before an uncle (already red-faced) raises the politely bowed heads with an old family joke. The feast has begun properly: it is one where we cackle over our sprawling (ideally-Irish) tree, where we cluck at the weather, where we melt under Merlot. The "kids' table," once a chintzy, insulting card table reserved for busy elbows and cranberried faces, is now a proper leaved dinner table populated by the willing, the newly adult. The only occupant shorter than five seven is second in seniority, the victim of some stray Norwegian gene. Each cousin has become a person in their own right, even as their face echoes a child from a decade long past. This table is a popular stop for those (more salt than pepper) in search of another glass of wine. The advice begins as a trickle honestly asked. The cousin nearest me is the next in line* to be college-bound. She asks me about which foreign languages she can take to bolster her CV. She has judicial aspirations. I answer her as I faintly recall the girls' tagalong from when the genders were bitter natural foes. *It is an oft-remarked coincidence that there would be precisely one cousin per grade, had each cousin remained in the earliest-possible grade and were there grades running from seventh to twenty-first. The pattern used to be more sensical. Soon, however, the wisdom grows to a stream, one less bidden and perhaps less useful. To the credit of the family's devotion to the theme, retrospection is a sure component of thanks, and regression, in turn, is the purest form of such looking back. The middle-elders' faces are near-flushed and are themselves harking back to a historic time (this one a bit more distant). Uncomfortable sibling-shoes still fit. Regrets (they became scars alongside the stretch marks we left) are once again becoming pink and angry and real and exciting. Thirsty glasses drop words (not without pain) en route to the bottles. They are quick, they are cryptic, they are mostly true, and they are certainly more about the speaker than the audience. There are four of us (not without wrinkles) who exchange a common raise of the eyebrow which doubts the impact of such counsel.** **It was at this stage in the previous two years when I heard the most complete first-hand account of my parents' courtship. Even as I dye my blood more red each year, I am filled with admiration for the cohesion of this bizarre, incomprehensible spectacle. 6:04 a.m. - 2011-11-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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