“No Relaxing!”

Postprandial nap denied; overstuffed dinner companion forced to give chase

Kina has no patience for moments of meditation, regardless of the lingering effects of bread stuffing and roast turkey. Since her tiny rocketship metabolism is scarcely affected by gravy intake, she doesn’t yet understand the importance of a good post-Thanksgiving nap. On a typical Thanksgiving, this is not a problem, since we will be with either Laurea’s whole family or my own, and the cumulative attention of seven people in a largish suburban home will allow any one or two of us to find a good nappin’ corner, but this was the first Thanksgiving in eighteen years that we have celebrated in our own living room, and so corners (and by extension, naps) were hard to come by. I’ll spare you the gory details, but you can safely assume that Kina ensured every last carbohydrate we had was well-spent by the time we dragged her, overtired and bawling, to bed last night. (The illustration in today’s paper of her dragging me around is also an accurate representation of yesterday’s events.)

The child definitely had plenty of calories to work with, after having consumed several pounds of roast turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce. (At one point, she was spotted gnawing an entire turkey leg.) I had pre-ordered a turkey from the local butcher, who had warned me that turkey sizing was an imprecise art—some years are small-turkey years, others big-turkey years. I had asked for the smallest possible turkey and resigned myself to the possibility that we might have to eat fourteen pounds of turkey. I was wrong; we had to eat slightly more than seventeen pounds of turkey. In hindsight, it’s hilarious that I was worried about this, since Kina eats like two grown adults. She likes white meat, which is either a tremendous compliment to my skills at roasting turkey or a horrible disappointment regarding my child’s taste in poultry—no self-respecting Chinese person would, of their own volition, choose breast meat over a chicken thigh. In any case, this turkey’s getting eaten.

In a year like this, it can be handy to have a little drill sergeant telling you to get off your ass—no dwelling in your isolation, moping about for lost holidays. As Kina reminds us constantly, the performance is yet to come. Until then, we eat up and practice, practice. We’ll need all our strength to muddle through. I hope you are muddling through; we’re thankful, again, for you.

dad