Letting a story take shape

(Or: about Thanksgiving Notebook, an as-yet-unfinished essay...)

[Artwork by Olga Nikitina]

Thanksgiving is long over. But my notebook, a compilation of Thanksgiving menus and notes to “future Suzanne” dating back to 2007, still sits on my kitchen counter. I’ve been working on an essay titled, strangely, Thanksgiving Notebook. I started it in 2021. It’s still unfinished.

Here’s the thing: I think I know what I want to say. It’s a hard message, though, full of disappointment, even despair. I never write the word estrangement, but it’s right there: in the size of the turkey, the number of pies, the sangria I used to make for my two sisters-in-law. Still, the message remains slippery as a fish.

Between these notebook pages is confusion and sadness. For what once was and might have been. For what is.

Because unwritten, too, is me trying to read the signs. An invitation to Christmas Eve and my heart soars. Then there is the invitation that never comes for my niece’s baby shower or her children’s christenings — one, two, three — all indications that I remain outside the fold. I’m like a bookie or a tea-leaf reader — a realist. I can see how long the odds of reconciliation have become.

“Don’t let yourself be strangers in each other’s houses.” My father’s prophetic words, uttered a few years before his death. It’s like he saw this: me on the outside, nose pressed up against the window; my brothers and their families inside, carrying on with their happily-ever-afters.

I open the file and reread the Thanksgiving Notebook. The message is there. Some days, I even catch a glimpse of a flick of a tail or the shimmer of scales just below the water’s surface.

Like most stories, this one took time to reach its conclusion. I’m almost there. Maybe I’ll finish the essay. Or perhaps it will remain unwritten. A memory of long-ago Thanksgivings. The present, seen clearly, maybe for the first time.

And a future that might always have been inevitable.