November Reign

It occurred to me Thursday, having stayed up all night after a late gig, facing the massive cooking-marathon with equal parts of anticipation and dread, that I hated Thanksgiving as a child.  I don't have those warm Kodak-memories of family and holiday cheer.  Like most children, I didn't particularly care about food, especially unfamiliar things.  Even playdates, besides beloved milk and cookies, brought strange smells and styles of cooking that made me customize schedules to exclude mealtimes.  Family structure in those days was rigid; parents forced children to eat, made few concessions to aversions and allergies.  We sat at table and absorbed dysfunction without having the skills or permission to process these dynamics.

How things have changed... mothers and fathers seem super attentive to their kids' food preferences.  They experiment and compete.  Even the cooking shows on the Food Channel have under-12 contestants who can not only prepare but know about food chemistry and cuisine.  In the 1950's we had unsophisticated palates.  My mother became a better chef as time went on, and lunch progressed from grilled velveeta-cheese to salads and wider nutritional choices, but our childhood food experiences were limited.

Thinking back, most Thanksgivings were at our aunt's.. not our 'blood-aunt' but one of those women in my parents' circle that we referred to that way.  She had her actual relatives crammed into an expanded dining dais-arrangement that was always uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking.  One of her sisters was super fat and had married a blind man; my sister would make weird faces at him and whisper to me that he can't see her anyway, but I was halfway between suppressed giggling and actual fear of his disability.  I hated the food.  Rolls were safe.  Milk.  Even the pie was awful.  Back then my mother would sometimes let me have a peanut-butter sandwich before we left.  And it wasn't the food-- I just wanted to leave, to go up to my cousin's room and look at her strange dolls and books.  To go home-- back to my little easels and looms and library.  My lair.

Once I reached teenage years, I could do volunteer work-- serve at the local shelter, cook for the poor and sick; this was a relief.  During college, these holidays were for reuniting with old mates-- for football, for some-- the meaning changes.  Newly married, I wanted my British husband to experience American tradition-- despite the fact that I had to invent mine since most of my extended family had 'fallen out' by this time from divorce or petty dramas.  And once my son was born, well.. I reinvented the day for him-- there was the Wednesday night visit to the inflating of the floats, then the parade... and I learned to cook turkey and host my musical families with joy.  I'm an adult now, I repeated over and over when my own family began to leave us out of their inner-sanctum invitations.  Me the single Mom-- perpetually hung over from lack of sleep and late-night gigs-- the annual Hendrix tribute foremost on my mind every late November; I checked the Head-of-Household box on my tax return and appreciated the one perk of being a sole parent.

For a time in the 90's and early 2000's, my annual dinners were all-night parties; I hosted people who hated their families, European transplants who simply enjoyed the food, my son's friends who escaped their own dinners, strays and band members.  My house was full and my cooking skills impressed even me.  There was music... there was joy and great conversation.

This year, for the first time in decades, there was no Hendrix tribute.  There is no more BB King's; Iridium closes down before 10 PM... even the Cutting Room seemed not welcoming.  I struggled to find the motivation to plan a dinner.  So many friends have been ill, have lost family members and parents, lost their personal mojo to the crushing daily reality of Trumped America; the holiday reminder of an increasingly distant past and pending future isolation grows a little more palpable.  My son's relationships are in flux; many of his closest friends are married and have started their own families.

My usual guests have seemed less enthusiastic than in the past.  I have dropped a couple of them along with the more challenging dishes-- the sweet-potato/green-apple casserole which requires hours of prep-- the pies.  I still do a huge turkey with my well-loved stuffing-- the cranberry, the other fixings... my building staff waits patiently for their plate-- my son eats up a storm, but my own enthusiasm has shifted.  I keep diagnosing the start of this as the 2016 post-election shock.  It's hard to believe that by next November we will have chosen again, god-willing we are able to survive one more year and have the collective sense to do something about this.

Nevertheless, this was the smallest table in a long time.  I didn't even bother changing into my traditional dress.  We sat and enjoyed one another at an intimate meal, and I finished clean-up at a reasonable hour.  Of course there are a few days' worth of leftovers and sharing, an extra reason for my son to come uptown and help me with my Christmas tree... but the shift in time is apparent.  Maybe I will have grandchildren before long and these traditions will regain their magic.  I'm not sure.  Watching this cartoon president pretend to honor the confused military ranks certainly took the air out of our Thanksgiving balloons.

I thought this year about the 1963 holiday-- how profoundly, post-assassination, our world had changed... how in 2001 I felt so conscientious about giving and appreciating, about generosity and post-9/11 understanding... the second generational loss-of-innocence for us baby-boomers: we re-set  our sense of compassion... humility, humanity.  But Thursday night the football game was blaring from the back room-- nothing on my turntable; halfway through eating I realized we hadn't lit the candles.  And just this morning, on the last day of a sad month, I can't seem to recall saying my usual Thanksgiving grace.  Amen, November.

Garage Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving. I’m cooking post-midnight in my gym clothes, comme d’habitude… I’m listening to the Novaks—indie garage, not as get-up-and-dance as the Stones, not quite as raunchy as the Dolls, but feels appropriate. I think I saw them in a small club somewhere around Thanksgiving… remember asking how many cds they’d sold. The lead singer eagerly replied ‘You mean, including our parents?’ …and I was a lifelong fan. Even if they break up. You see, I’m old enough now to know what I like.

One of my friends showed up the other night looking thin. It’s the Apartment-renovation diet, she explained. You should try the Break-up-with-a-sax-player diet, I suggested. Which follows the Dysfunctional-jazz-musician diet. Or my neighbor's Cancer diet. The Foreclosure diet.

Last night I drove with my drummer out to Queens and thought I’d get into the holiday spirit by food-shopping at the supersized Pathmark after midnight. Not only was it overstocked with processed cans of yams and cranberry jello, but the price of a 99-cent tin foil turkey pan was $6. No lie. The turkeys, labeled ‘natural’, all contained 8-10% of broth, sugars, sulfites and other ‘natural’ ingredients to enhance the inherent turkey flavor. Right. Like the lead in the McDonald’s glasses. People were wheeling oversized carts overflowing with packaged, processed cakes and pies, breads and puddings. Prices were higher than Manhattan, and most customers were paying with their New York State benefit cards so who really bothers price-checking when we the starving and price-obsessed middle class are weighing every carrot and taking trains to the Bronx to save a few bucks on yams so we can foot their grocery bills with our tax dollars? Tax on things I never imagined-- chicken salad sandwiches and tax once again on new underwear for my son. Tax on his basketball sneakers which are a school team requirement.

On TV that show The Biggest Loser. This confuses me. The Winner is the Loser. The Loser gets smaller while his wallet presumably gets bigger. When my son was 15 he told me I was The Biggest Loser. I guess I lost the title. I actually liked it. It was like being the best B-side Mom. I’m listening to the Novaks singer who wants some girl and is convincing her she doesn’t have to lie down with him and doesn’t have to take her clothes off. He is calling himself a loser. Thom Yorke of Radiohead did this too. Jay-Zee doesn’t call himself a loser. He just admitted to having shot his brother but my son says he is the quintessence of the American Dream. You see, now you don’t start out as a busboy or mail clerk, you sell drugs and fund your first recording. Then at gunpoint you threaten someone to sign and distribute and bingo. You marry Beyonce and become a societal role model because other rappers beat their girlfriends and don’t ‘put a ring around it’.

I used to have a savings passport book and put my babysitting money into a bank where the nice spectacled banker patted my head and stamped my pages. I watched the interest column grow. This is the American Dream, he told me…a tree from an acorn. I wasn’t sure what he meant but today I get charged to write a check and get treated like a lowlife at my local branch where there is no interest column and the tellers are way better dressed than I am and have perfect manicures. An acorn from a tree.

Still... it’s Thanksgiving, I’ve survived another year of swimming against a current of growing conservativism and an increasingly third-world economic climate. I’m still playing bass, still high-fiving the homeless guy on the corner, still pretty happy to have a houseful of what my son considers less and less ‘my loser friends’—my B-side family, my posse who don’t beat their children, who don’t steal from their constituents or have sex with their secretaries because they don’t have secretaries. I didn’t get a single delivery, I carried the 50 pounds of groceries myself, I paid with cash, I’m cooking wih real pots and will use lead-free porcelain plates which someone long-dead once painted with great care and pride, and I will feel like an American. I have earned the right to play blues, to understand jazz, to dis my politicians and to look my gods and ex-boyfriends in their heart’s eye and tell them I’m thankful and content to have this alternative life and I really don’t want any reality show but the camera-free one I live.

Amen. Ah women. Grace.