Ham

Thanksgiving was fun. We had ham, and it was delicious. The no-turkey tradition goes back to a "food allergy" contrived by my great-grandmother to avoid the traditional fare herself. She's gone now, but the ham lives on and has become a tradition of its own.

Studying my own family dynamics is a storytelling lesson in itself. A house containing several generations of the same clan, with all the moments of joy, humor and (yikes!) tension, makes a laboratory of sorts. I become an observer for my art, a behavioral scientist of sorts.

I watch, and wonder at the difficulty of re-creating this sort of wonderful tension in a work of fiction! The kind that is full of subtext and implications. The kind that is a dance among stakes that are constantly changing. The kind that might not look like tension to the casual observer, and yet is palpable beneath the surface.

As a writer, I live to re-create the beautiful moments, too. The laughter, the love, and the lingering sense of the magical Now. The baby who will be like a different person next Thanksgiving. The grandmother who may not be here at all. The awareness that all we ever have is today, and so we should love each other as best we can.

Family is a story with an arc that is not a perfect bell shape. There is no clear protagonist, except for we, the characters, who might sometimes each mistake ourselves for the hero. The ending is sort of nebulous at best. But I know that without this most sacred family narrative, no other story can exist for me. We tell it with love, and with laughter, and with ham!