Mom’s Thanksgiving

“I can see it,” my sister said.  “She acts like a little kid.  She has your attention and wants to see how much she can stretch it.  It’s all about being served,” she said.

My sister was talking about the time between when my mother announces she wants to be taken to the bathroom and when she actually stands up to go, the time when you have to stand and wait for her.  It might be three minutes, it might be twenty minutes, and I have even spent over an hour on the sofa before she decides she isn’t going.

Her Thanksgiving grace went something like this:

“There are so many people who have less than we do, and so I know I shouldn’t whine, even though I do.  I know I should be thankful for my husband, even though he won’t change his mind.  I worry about all my children and hope they will finally get their acts together and make me worry less.”

Yeah, I know.  But it’s really not appropriate to say “What Bullshit!” at the dinner table.

So, here is my version of what she should have said.

I want to thank God and all of you for indulging my whims and treating me like a queen everyday.

I know that very few people have two people who give up their lives to keeping them comfortable, but I have that and that is a blessing, even though you never do exactly what I tell you to do in the way that I want it done.

With the help of my family, I am able to wallow in my own self-pity and not have to work hard to clean up my own messes or to serve others in the world, and that is a gift I value everyday as I sit in my chair, stinky and obtuse.

I give thanks that though my own introverted worldview I am able to control the world around me so I don’t have to rise to any challenge, but rather can just suck the joy and the air out of the room with my own sense of heartbreak that I have never been happy.

I get exactly what I want as you people serve me, and that is something I am entirely thankful for.   May you all keep trying to make me happy and then keep failing, so I can always sit here in my own narcissistic fervor with my own worry to keep me comfortable.

Amen.