Another dysfunctional Thanksgiving

Another dysfunctional Thanksgiving!

Time to dust off the china, chipped and mismatched

like us, incomplete yet serviceable

broken and lost over the years

and added to, piece by piece

partial sets of dinnerware entrusted to me for safekeeping

the salvage of shipwrecks and divorces

fairy tales with bitter endings told in bread-and-butter plates and gravy boats

Dear Lord, forgive us

Ours is not the candle-lit table pictured on the cover of Pottery Barn

We are not those people caught in a moment of laughter, raising Riedels for a toast,

the plastic turkey posed on a hand-painted platter made in Portugal or Poland, some distant oppressed country our ancestors fled

in search of freedom and a job

So bring your new girlfriend, your old boyfriend

Bring the guy next store

Manny? sure, he’s family

Bring your ex husbands — bring my ex husbands —

We’re a family of steps leading where

I don’t know but bring your excess baggage

if you don’t mind sleeping with it

we’ve got plenty of room

Dogs? Yeah,

they’re family too, and so much more thankful

Yet they too will show their teeth

before the day is done

snarling and quarreling over

slivers of fat and the

wishbone gets thrown out with

the trash

again

Come one, come all, for yet another dysfunctional Thanksgiving!

If you’ve got a car that will make it

if your battered heart can take the journey

over the river and through the woods

to grandmother’s house where the smell of roast turkey

like regret,

whets the desire for what never was

Let’s give thanks for the miracle of water turned into wine

fermented grape to ease the heart’s burn

proof that Jesus loves us every one

Pass the stuffing please, and the gravy

a little lumpy but heartfelt

plenty of God’s grace to go around

Under the table the dogs pray

with pure and trusting hearts

while outside in the forest bears settle in for a long sleep

and a generation of acorns buried and forgotten

wait for spring.

— Linda Collison, 2012