Thanks, Giving, and Tawny Port

This is going to be strange Thanksgiving. I've decided on a rather warped strategy for getting through today. It will include a play-by-play update. It'll be like you, the reader, are right there with me! "Oh goody!", you're saying right now. Right?! Here we go.

8:58am: Mom is fretting and whimpering. Kind of a pre-anxiety attack. She keeps asking me where everybody is. I told her it's just her, Dad, and me, and Dad's asleep. She wants to climb into bed with him. I convince her that's not such a good idea. They haven't slept together in thirty years. We're already one half of an anti-anxiety pill into the day.

9:01am: The parade is starting. I'm watching from the living room. I can hear Mom whimpering in her room. I think seriously of sipping on a teensy bit of the tawny port. But, in reality, I'll probably wait. At least until ten.

9:44am: Trying to jumpstart Mom back into her normal routine, and hopefully a relatively normal state of mind. Got her into the dining room for her breakfast, while I start tearing up Challah for the stuffing. I pull out the big, blue wooden bowl that is always traditionally the Fleener Stuffing Bowl.

I ask Mom, "Where'd you get this bowl Mom?" And this spawns a whole stream of fragmented comments....."Marshall Field"...."wedding gift"......"spices and herbs" (?!).........."couldn't find it....."........then, as Emily, the bulldog started licking up a dab of cereal Mom had dropped on the floor earlier, Mom yells out, clear as a bell, "Clean it up Emily, it's all you're going to get today!"

10:44am: Dad's up. Bracing myself for his presence--sticking his nose (literally) into anything everything I'm trying to cook. He wheels into the kitchen and starts asking questions about EVERYTHING, and in the midst of my trying to explain to him why I was cutting up onions (for the stuffing), Mom blurts out, "And Pauline was Jewish!" which stops both Dad and I cold.

(Oh, by the way, Pauline was my grandfather's secretary.) (Yeah......like that makes Mom's outburst any more logical....) Okay. The tawny port is out of the liquor cabinet and now setting on the kitchen counter.

10:55am: Dad: (after snooping around the kitchen and discovering the bottle of tawny port) "Hey! What are you gonna do with that bottle of tawny port?"
Me: "I'm gonna drink it!"
And then he made the face that's posted on the side.

12:10pm: Turkey's stuffed and in the oven. Mom's pulling catalogs and blankets and other crap out of the basket next to her chair in the living room. She's looking for something. I ask her what. She says: "For.......something........night.........scare my face.........table......." and then she just gives up and goes back to looking.
What's Dad doing? Reading the paper. (like any other day)

12:44P M.; Dad: (to no one and to everyone, and without looking up from the paper) "Well I'll be damned, another royal wedding! Did you see this Patreesha?"
Mom: (her brain thinking it understands, but doesn't at all) "Oh yes, how about that?"
Thirty seconds goes by.
Mom: "Who's getting married?"
Then Dad explains the whole Prince William thing to ...her. Which doesn't help but hey, it's always worth a try.
About five minutes goes by.
Mom: (to me) "Did you show Dad your locket?"
Me: "What?" (subtext = wtf?)
Because.......I don't own a locket.
Mom: "Tell Dad about that ring that Myrt gave you." (Myrt was my dad's mother.)
So....the tawny port is now opened.......

!:41pm: (note the tawny port-induced typos that have started to pop up) Welllllll...... leave it to dogs and babies, right? The National Dog Show has been on since noon and Mom is now as calm and as content as a kisker's whitten. Oh wait.......well, you know what I mean. That was the port talking.

3:50pm: Turkey comes out in a half hour; the greens are simmering on the stove (mushrooms, kale, leeks, yam medallions, and sherry), Dad's still reading the paper, with Emily at his feet (see photo), and Mom's in her room fretting over how to get Dr. Oz on her television (even though it already is). Oh, Sweet Turkey-Induced-Sleep, where are you?!

4:17pm: The turkey rest-ith. The green/yams simmer-ith. Mom's still trying to find Dr. Oz. (Aren't we all?)

5:51pm: Done. Everything put away. Kitchen cleaned.
Family members will appreciate Dad's big remark at dinner......"Hey, ya know what'd be great?!" (Family members will know what's coming.)
He just keeps talking (because he never waits for acknowledgment anyway), "It'd be great if everyone came here for Thanksgiving next year!! Wouldn't that be GREAT?!" (For non-family members, this is probably the stupidest idea in the universe.)

Then he spends the next five minutes trying to count how many people
"EVERYBODY" would actually come to (Wait.......honestly, it was more like ten
minutes......Dad is soooo NOT good with numbers!).

"Nineteen people! That'd be nineteen people! Wouldn't that be GREAT?!"
Again, no acknowledgment.

And then fifteen minutes later, "It'll never happen." (Which is what family members were all saying when they read the remark in the first place.)

And while Dad was going on about having EVERYBODY getting together and how great that would be, my inner dialogue was out of control! In fact, I had, like, sixteen different inner dialogues talking over and under each other, and then rebutting each other, and then agreeing with each other, and it all got so crazy I had to just get up from the table and go have more pie. There's nothing like pie to quell the inner dialogue. "s."