Some stories before Thanksgiving

Story one:

Few things were as alluring to me as the idea of being a psychic when I was younger. I couldn't really tell you why, I just knew I wanted to be a psychic. I can recall two accounts where I tested the waters on how believable my psychic prowess would be, should I ever truly develop it.

Episode one: My mom had this batshit crazy bird that she loved so fucking much. It was a Quaker Parrot named Mozart, and this bird was a little fucking shitheel. It only liked my mom, it swore like crazy, and it said really creepy things at night. Mozart liked to hide in my mom's hair, so sometimes, when I wanted to give my mom a hug, I'd furtively check her shoulders to see if her asshole watchdog of a dick bird was hiding in her hair, and when I saw nothing, I'd go in to hug my mom, and out would run this screeching little asshole, clapping it's beak at me and flapping its stupid wings, crawing the entire time, and I'd start screaming and run upstairs, drowning out my mom's laughter and Mozart's squawks with my frightened yelling. This was a once daily occurrence, at least, and you'd think I'd just settle for giving my mother a curt "hello, woman that birthed me" instead of a hug, but I didn't learn. It's no wonder nobody believed that I was psychic. I couldn't even determine with my eyes if a bird was around, how the fuck was I supposed to be believably omniscient? I used to wake up in the middle of the night and hear metal rattling and a very loud "WHATCHA DOING, BAD BOY?" being screamed from downstairs. It was Mozart's favorite thing to say. And then he'd repeat it. "Whaaaaaaaaaaaatcha doin'? Whatcha doin', bad boyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?" Like some kind of ghost that really wants you to reconsider your life choices. My mom promises that she never taught Mozart to swear, so it must have been her husband at the time, but I'd walk by his cage and he'd jump over onto the sides and scream, "FUCKER!" and I'd be so sad about this dumb fuck bird's opinion of me that I'd leave the room and go do something else. Mozart was a fucking nightmare of a bird, and I used to daydream about the day that bird flew the coop.

Until it happened.

Mozart was always out of his cage when we were home, which made being downstairs EXTRA spicy and terrifying, and because my step dad was also a cunt of a human being with the intelligence of a dumb thing, he left the patio door open while cleaning one day, and Mozart literally flew the fucking coop. My mom was DEVASTATED. I had never seen my mom cry like that before, and it was heartbreaking for me (I was about nine at the time), and I didn't want to sit there, powerless, while my mom was hurting and mourning.

Obviously that meant it was time to fake a vision.

I planned this to a T...a really fucking stupid, poorly conceived, T. I would be playing outside, in the front yard, just in case my mom was watching (she never did, honestly, I'm not sure what I was thinking. I just have a flair for the dramatic), when the vision would come upon me. I would put my hand to my head, fall to the ground, twitch a little, and then jump up, full of vigor and psychic prophecy, and tell my mother that I knew where her beloved Mozart was. Obviously, my genius level planning forgot to account for two things: One, if my mother HAD been watching me, she would have assumed I was having a seizure; two, if my seizure vision went off unwatched and I were allowed to tell my mother of my third eye clarity, Mozart would need to actually BE where I said he was. This is why there are no heist movies with just children at the helm. Children are fucking idiots.
Out in the yard, I was struck by my vision (a marvelous performance. I definitely didn't phone it in, I am almost 100% positive I REALLY looked like I was having a seizure. Er, vision), and I ran inside and said to my mom, holding my hands up to my temples in a way that I thought signified I was breaking in a newly developed psychic power (but really, I was just universally signalling that I had a tension headache), and calmly stated, "Mom...I have seen Mozart. I know where he is." I don't remember my mother's reaction, but thinking objectively, I can only imagine that it was so hopeful and happy, and I have mixed feelings about that. I proceeded to describe where I saw her bird, and that I knew it was her bird instead of one of the other millions of quaker parrots that swarm Florida trees because, and I quote, "I just knew". I sounded less like a person who could psychically solve crimes and find lost things and more like a kid who just peeped her mom's missing bird in a very real, very non-psychic or stupid, way.

My idiot ass never bothered to make sure I explicitly stated I was struck with a vision. Because kids are fucking dumb and do not think things through, and thank fucking god for that shit, because I can catch my son's silly ass in a lie in .004 seconds. So my mom dragged me over to this area, and of course, the bird wasn't there, and of COURSE my mom was crushed. But also, let's be honest, a little bit of a moron herself for thinking that a bird, with wings, would sit in one spot long enough for a kid to fake a psychic seizure, explain in not-so-great detail the "seeing" of the bird to her grieving mother, and then trudge all the way over to a spot in the back of the neighborhood to look for it. I picked the back of the neighborhood because I figured that would make my vision more believable, for some reason. It didn't.

Episode two:

My timeline of trying to make everyone think I'm psychic is a bit muddy, honestly, and I don't know if these stories are in correct order, but I do know they're the same year. My little sister hadn't been born yet, and I was still growing out my unfortunate Richard Simmons haircut from the previous spring, so I looked a lot like an Italian mop with no fashion sense to speak of, and a large chip on her shoulder because of it, hiding under the most gigantic glasses ever put on a human face. A real winner. The kind of kid Beverly Clearly would write of in a low key effort to teach more popular kids about the negative effects of bullying. This was right before Thanksgiving, so I'm inclined to believe this was AFTER the unsuccessful "I've SEEN your bird" incident. I had been spending the weekend with my aunt and uncle, and I'm pretty sure it's their fault I wanted to be psychic. Not because of anything they ever said to me or tried to inspire in me, but because they were fucking REALLY into New Age hokum, and I always slept in the room that they turned into their library. So I would read up on chakras and past lives and near death experiences and psychics in the wee hours of the morning, as an eight year old, and it's no fucking wonder that I'm so god damn weird. My aunt had taken me to Stein Mart to buy a new dress for Thanksgiving AND Christmas. I remember the dress surprisingly well, because I modeled it as best I could after a dress I had read about in Anne of Green Gables. Anne's dress had been a pale, delicate blue, with buttons down the front, and puffed sleeves. I longed for puffed sleeves because Anne did, and I always thought of myself as Anne. My dress was a deep royal blue, with gold buttons in the shape of stars down the front, and gloriously puffed sleeves. My sleeves were a see through material, probably tulle or organza, with gold embroidered stars on them. They were so wonderfully puffy, I truly felt like a modern day Anne Shirley, but with even less desirable hair. My aunt and I were driving home from our shopping trip, and a semi that wasn't paying attention merges exceptionally quickly into the lane that my aunt's tiny little tin can of a car was occupying, and had it not been for my aunt's lightning reflexes, we would have been in a really bad accident. As it was, my aunt acted quickly and moved her car over, and started swearing and screaming at the driver of the semi. She was shaken, I was shaken, and you know what that means.

It was time to fake another vision.

My opportunistic ass perks up immediately and decides to seize the opportunity to rectify my mistake from a few months ago. I put my hands to my temples again (my family must have thought that I suffered from cluster headaches) and solemnly declared, "Aunt Julie, I had a vision that this would happen." My aunt turned to me and said, "What??" And I was so excited. "Psychic" me was given the berth to debut herself, and I was going to make it fucking GOOD, god dammit. So I took a deep breath and said, "Yes. Last night, I had a dream that we would almost be in an accident with a truck that looked exactly like that one." And oh, I remember feeling so proud and pleased and like this was going to change how my family saw me. My aunt looked at me, bewildered, and screamed, "Then why the hell didn't you say something when you saw the fucking truck????"

She had me there.

I can't tell you how I answered, all I can tell you is that I never tried to be a psychic ever again.

Story two, or the reason that I really wanted to write this blog:

I was kicked out of my mom's house when I was 15. Right before I turned 15, because I got to celebrate my birthday with my friends, and it was the last birthday I'd spend with them until my 21st. My actual removal from my mom's house was waylaid because I begged to be able to stay for my birthday. She considered it a last request for a dead man walking, I suppose, because being removed from Florida really upended my life. And those words taste like vinegar in my mouth, because I fucking HATE Florida. But it's true. The last Thanksgiving I spent with my mom, I was 14 years old. I spent my 15th and 16th Thanksgiving with my dad. My 17th Thanksgiving, my dad spent with his girlfriend and her kids, and left me alone. I remember eating rice with a sad slice of melted cheese, and some vinaigrette mixed in. I smoked cigarettes and watched HBO. My impression of a single man in his 40s with no friends was spot fucking on. For my 21st Thanksgiving, my daughter's dad and I had split, and I had moved back down to Florida in May of that year. By June I had my own job and my own apartment, and my dad was repairing a jeep he'd bought for himself to give me as a car. I spent my 21st birthday with my friends, and I was looking forward to spending my first Thanksgiving in years with my parents by splitting up the day between the two of them. I called my mom on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and said, ok, the jeep is still being worked on, can you come get me in the AM and then I'll have my dad pick me up in the afternoon from wherever you're spending Thanksgiving? My mom was silent for a long time, and then she said, "Uh, I assumed you were going to be with your dad for Thanksgiving. We're up in Apopka with Terry and Julie." I said, "Oh, ok, no big deal, I guess, happy thanksgiving!" and hung up. Because it wasn't a big deal.

Yet.

I called my dad next and said, "So, can you pick me up tomorrow in the AM? My mom is up at Terry and Julie's, so I'll just spend the entire day with you." My dad scoffed at me in the way that my dad does and says, "Drea, I uh, I don't know how to tell you this, but I thought you'd be spending the day at your mom's tomorrow. We're up in Longwood with Kevin and Melissa. The whole family is here! Sorry, princess, I just thought you'd be with your mom."

It was a problem now.

I suppose some of the blame can be laid at my feet. I didn't think ahead to make sure their thanksgiving plans included me, and in my arrogance, I assumed they were both so excited at the prospect of spending a Thanksgiving with me because they hadn't in years that I didn't bother to cement plans with either of them until the day before. I will accept culpability there. But it's much more fun to drag my parents through the mud for having an O. Henry kind of moment, but in a way that's cruel instead of heaartbreakingly kind. They assumed I'd be spending the day with the other without bothering to ask each other or, more importantly, me, to spend the day with either of them. I cried for a little bit, then walked over to Publix and bought myself some fancy (in a microwaveable way) ravioli, some bagels, and some lunch meat, and a few other odds and ends to snack on, and then I headed to the liquor store and bought a big fucking bottle of Cruzan mango coconut rum, because if I was going to spend the holiday on my own, I was going to get fucking BLITZED. And boy, did I fucking EVER. As I was walking into my apartment with my heavyweight contender for "world's saddest holiday groceries", my upstairs neighbor said, "that stuff isn't for tomorrow, is it?" I joked it off and said of course it wasn't, har har har! My neighbor asked me what I'd be doing, and I said spending a quiet day at home, since my roommates had left town to be with family the prior Friday. He wished me a happy holiday, I went inside, and I pictured scenario after scenario where I made my mom and dad feel foolish and left out, and I may or may not have broken into my cruzan rum early. I woke up the next day and started drinking fairly immediately, I drunkenly cooked myself some kind of disgusting breakfast of eggs and lunchmeat, and watched Maury Povich. By the time lunch rolled around, I was halfway done with my rum, I was calling Allen, who was busy with his own family, and otherwise feeling pretty shit about my life. Then I turned on my music and decided to dance. I danced and danced and had a fucking blast. I was listening to music so loudly and dancing drunkenly with so much fervor that I almost didn't hear my doorbell going off like crazy. I stopped my music, opened up my door, and there was my neighbor, holding a gorgeous plate of food, and smiling at me. When he handed the plate over, he said, "if you don't want to be alone, we're right upstairs. But if you do, I want you to eat something better than lunchmeat." I mean, rude, because those fancy raviolis were delicious, and my choice in lunchmeat was impeccable. But I was so grateful that someone had thought of me on a day where I felt so unloved and ignored that I gave him the biggest hug in the world. But only in drunk world. In sober world, I lunged at my neighbor, bottle of cruzan in hand, grabbing on to his shoulder and toppling some of the food off of the plate, yelling something about gratitude incoherently. Honest to god, I don't really remember much else of that encounter. I wasn't black out drunk, but I'm almost positive that I deleted the rest of it from my memory because it couldn't have made me look good. I remember plenty from the rest of the day. I ate my food that he brought down, I drunkenly called both of my parents, though neither of them answered, and I talked to Allen later that night about the shit day I'd had. Whether that was coherent or not, I'll never fully know. Allen says it was, but I think he's just being generous. I was pretty fucking sloppy drunk. I woke up the next morning with one of only two hangovers I've ever had in my life, and it was the closest to vomiting from alcohol that I've ever been EVER. I definitely did down an entire bottle of rum in one day, and I definitely did NOT drink any water. I stayed in bed all day and watched Kenneth Branagh movies and swore that one day, my parents would know how badly I felt my first Thanksgiving away from my daughter, where neither of them had the presence of mind to make sure I'd be ok on a holiday that would be hard for anybody going through a really difficult separation.

This is my year, mother fuckers.

My mom will be here tomorrow for two things: the first Thanksgiving she's ever spent with her grandson, and the first Thanksgiving she's spent with me since I was 14. I didn't invite my dad because I knew he couldn't come, but when I mentioned to him that my mom would be here, he shot me an indignant, :And you didn't ask your old man?" I responded with, "Oh, sorry, daddy, I assumed you'd be with Caryn." Which he will be, but he was still hurt he didn't get an invite. I feel vindicated on that level.

As for my mother, well....I certainly didn't go out and buy an entire bottle of Cruzan coconut for my own health.