While Thanksgiving, with its holiday magic of settling conflicts, brings most families and lovers together, it annually renews an old rift between me and my boyfriend. Our argument begins, as always, with an innocent invitation to his family's Thanksgiving dinner, an invitation that I will most likely forever decline. He would ask and then go quiet, knowing that I have and will never celebrate a Thanksgiving.
After that first fight, I thought he understood--whether from memory or osmosis--my reasons for refusing, and I would think of his silence as a soft acquiescence. But he would hit me with a well-ordered list of reasons--of family, good food, and fun. His voice swelling with frustration and anticipated excitement.
I would tell him about the UAINE name for thanksgiving, of how they meet at noon on that fourth Thursday every year in Plymouth to mourn the loss of their land and people. He, mostly liberal, would acknowledge their suffering in a low voice; yet stubbornly insist on convincing me to celebrate a holiday which tries every year to rewrite that suffering.
In our first year of dating, I asked what his family does on the holiday. "We would all meet at my aunt's house to eat and talk," he said. He insisted that they didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving but have a big family meal that day because it is one of the few off-days everyone shares. I asked if they have any Thanksgiving traditions like the UAINE community who performs ceremonies and offers prayers to their dead. He hesitated. Stretching the syllables of his answer, he said, "yes. We take turns saying what we're thankful for... my aunt does it for the kids."
"Were they told the Thanksgiving truth or myth?" I asked. "They're kids. Why would they need to know that?" He said knitting his eyebrows, and I could tell that he was really starting to worry. "Would you tell our children how they suffered?" he was now half-laughing. Neither of us wanted children, but I could not shake the growing worry in his voice.
"Yes," I said, the startled faces of our phantom children flashing through my mind. He got quiet just then and in an almost whisper asked if I would not come to Thanksgiving even after we are married and old with children.
"No" I said--too quickly.
Thanksgiving is now a little more than a week away and although I do not plan on celebrating it this year; if my boyfriend were to ask, which I am certain that he will, how we will teach our never-would-be children about the holiday, I would tell him that we would say the truth; that we would gather with family to eat and remember: that that day would be one of deep reflection; that we would not forget the first peoples who suffered.
