Through My Eyes

Thanksgiving. A time of giving thanks and family gathering. That sounds all nice, warm and fuzzy in that context, right? Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but my family’s yearly gathering isn’t anything like that. It’s a jumble of insanity, gossip, tellings of embarrassing moments from the past (that is sometimes better off forgotten), and the occasional snippy hostility remarks.

That is not to say that getting together on the holidays to see your family is a bad thing, because it’s not. Family is extremely important, no matter how much they grind away on your last nerve. Believe me, I’ve felt the need to flee and escape plenty of times. But I do love my crazy, dysfunctional family deep down and I’m not afraid to show it.

I don’t get together with my whole family for the holidays (as in distant cousins, and things like that). It’s just part of my immediate family on my mom’s side. So it’s just me, my mom, my older sister (who just moved out on her own this summer—rejoice!), my aunt and uncle, and my grandmother and grandfather (who I call Pappy). The grandparents are my mom’s parents. My dad’s parents live a long way up in northern Pennsylvania. Okay, so it’s only a few hours drive from where I live in central Pennsylvania. But whatever.

Even in that small amount of people, lots of crazy things can pop up. Gossip I don’t want to hear is definitely one of them. Take this year, for example. They were talking about my grandmother’s younger brother (she is from a family that had twelve children) and his girlfriend, and how she somehow managed to fake disability. You don’t know how many time I resisted rolling my eyes. I mean, really. As my mom said, they had to have found some proof that something was wrong with her if the doctor gave her disability. It bugs me even remembering this conversation. I keep rolling my eyes as I write this.

What was usually the tradition for Thanksgiving was to go to my grandparent’s house for dinner. In the past couple of years that shifted to going to my aunt and uncle’s house. And in my family, not deciding to show up is NOT an option. When you get the call that invites you to dinner, that’s it, you’re done for. You just ask what time you should be there by, and lock on the shackles. God forbid you actually want to do your own thing for once. Like with me, maybe wanting to go down and do Thanksgiving with my father (not that he ever does anything, anyway).

It is inevitable. You go, or you will get disowned.

Something else that has started happening in the past couple of years is my grandfather taking pictures. He has been buying all of these disposable cameras and filling them up with pictures. I’m not sure why he has taken a fascination to them all of the sudden, but I don’t like it when he wants to take a picture with me in it. I don’t know why, but I just don’t really like my picture being taken. Sometimes I’m fine with it and just let him, but other times, I just run and hide somewhere where he can’t find me.

I want to know why people try to force dessert on you. Sure, just because I like pumpkin pie doesn’t mean that I need to eat any. “Oh, come on,” they (certain family members who will remain unnamed) say, “It’s Thanksgiving, the time where you’re supposed to eat a lot.”

Yeah, are they TRYING to get me so full that I get sick and throw everything back up? When I get full, I’m full. I’m not going to fit in some dessert just because I “like” it. Really, doesn’t that sound logical?

Maybe that made me sound like some picky-eater-anorexic. It wasn’t supposed to sound that way, because I do eat like a normal person. I just don’t want food shoved down my throat when I’m already full.

Speaking of food, I forgot to mention another tradition. My uncle and I always eat the turkey legs. We always have, and it is an unspoken known that they are ours for the taking.

I could probably ramble on about how crazy my family is, but I won’t. I always bring my MP3 player with me so I can stay sane at family gatherings. Sometimes I wonder how I would survive without it.

This is Through My Eyes. Take it or leave it.

-Aim