Just Another Fowled-up Holiday…?

Yesterday, as did so many others across America who are progressively, slowly going stark, raving mad from observing strict COVID-19 quarantine precautions, we had a family Thanksgiving gathering. And what, you might wonder, if you are an Arthur Schopenhower fan like I am, might we be possibly thankful for in view of the ongoing trials and tribulations we've experienced throughout the span of this wretched year? Well you might ask!

In a phrase, not bloody much, despite all the die-hard optimism that a great demographic segment of less complicated Americans persists in foisting off on all of us 'non-believers' (and somewhat cynically austere H. L. Mencken clones).

Our T-Day 'celebration' was, however, not an all-stops-out, mega-throng affair (like they seem constitutionally predisposed to in Texas), but merely four of us…all locally situated closely related immediate family members and all extremely careful about not exposing ourselves needlessly to potential COVID-19 spreaders/carriers. In other words BIG proponents of common sense and its requisite prudence.

'Extremely careful', in case you're wondering, translates to 1. avoiding strangers, 2. ALWAYS wearing a CDC-approved N95-certified protective mask whenever out among strangers in public, 3. scrupulously washing hands dozens of times each day in the course of normal affairs, 4. using copious amounts of hand-sanitiser, and 5. maintaining ‘social distancing’ minimums…roughly staying about 2 meters distance from others at all times).

Oh, we had all the usual surfeit of good foodstuffs…turkey, potatoes, yams, Chinese ‘sticky-rice’, home-made cranberry sauce, gravy, dressing, mixed vegetables, white rice, Lots of 'Dong Gu' and some rather delicious ‘Apple Hill’-obtained apple pie. All in all, it was a perfect gourmand’s delight, although I made a valiant effort to ease off a bit on food uptake (portion control).

What we didn’t have (fortunately, which would be something to be VERY thanksful for, in a sense) includes the not-atypical inter-familial feuds, grudges, fistfights, gunshot injuries and other delightful American holiday family gathering festivities that the national 5 PM news delights in regaling us all with, but what we also didn’t have is something I REALLY miss: convivial, stimulating, thoughtful, stimulating conversation with others who still have a few brain cells left with which to engage in relaxed conversational exchanges OR a desire to exercise them OR both.

My ‘family’, you see, is an ‘adopted’ family, since all my close relatives are now long gone or remotely otherwise located and my wife is Cantonese (Chinese). This makes for some very trying circumstances and communication complications that invariably stress me out more than a bit, but let me ‘esplain’ (as Lucille Ball’s husband, Ricky Ricardo, would put it...but if you don't know who either of them are, let's just overlook the reference here, since the Arnazes existed well before social media delineated the functional limits of Millennial knowledge...).

The four of us included myself, wifie (who is my age…over 70), wifie’s ‘baby-sister’ (at 60+, not exactly an infant any more) and one of her older sisters who last year suffered a stroke and has had cardiac valvular surgery. This last sister has never been a particularly sharp tool in the family tool chest, regrettably, given to a lifelong tendency to be stubbornly resistant and temperamentally reactive all her life. After all her recent health problems, this tendency, if anything, has become even more pronounced. That combined with a further tendency to not say much anyway, means that ‘enjoying a family dinner’ with her is usually about as much fun as having a root canal performed by a florist!

‘Baby-sis’ shows her relative youthfulness in being the spoiled darling of the family, never married and prone to self-indulgences (like buying a new Porsche every other year, etc., etc.). Granted, she’s incredibly generous with her attentions to the other family members but has absolutely no intellectual aspirations whatsoever. Furthermore, she’s one of those completely brain-washed ‘younger’ individuals who think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are Gods incarnate and who thinks that progressive ‘identity socialism’ is the coming wave of the future (despite having lived through some failed socialist governments herself…i.e. Communist China…atypical to most much younger generic American individuals), hence it’s absolutely impossible to discuss anything with her that might require some thoughtful reflection and intelligent dialogue.

Wifie, although my much-esteemed, much-loved and long-suffering life-partner and stalwart sharer of our common domestic journey through life, is…much to my everlasting regret…a die-hard Chinese Christian, who hews to a very basic, uncomplicated Christian belief in God, Jesus and the whole nine yards of basic (fundamental) Christian dogma. This frequently drives me crazy, since although I was raised originally as a Roman Catholic, then as a ‘high-church’ Anglican (Church of England) before piercing the glass ceiling on non-belief at age 13 (coinciding with puberty…how about that?) and becoming an avowed eschewer of all organised religion (read: atheist, if it helps), I now believe in absolutely nothing.

Consequently, it is absolutely impossible to have any meaningful conversation with wifie about anything that infringes on her rather fixed ‘faith’ in Jesus, Heaven and all that superstitious claptrap. I’ve long since given up even trying and it’s painfully clear that no one is quite as dedicated a Christian convert as the Chinese! Damn those 18th Century evangelicals who spent their lives trying to convert the ‘heathen Chinee’ to a more Puritan form of faith!

The other members of our (my adopted) family, another sister in San Diego with her frightful bore of an ostensibly Oxford-eddicated Yorkshireman hubby, a brother living in Oklahoma City with his honky wife, and another younger brother who is still living with his wife in Hong Kong (where he works as a Christian missionary…GAAK!), are all scattered elsewhere, so the four of us constitute the usual holiday family gathering I referenced at the onset of this celebratory observance tirade.

Oh yes, add to this the fact that half the verbal exchanges that do take place at our table are conducted in Cantonese (I studied Mandarin in Taiwan, so no luck there!), which typically excludes me (unless I pick up a familiar word or two, here and there) from the ebb and flow. [In fact, if Yorkshire born, Oxford eddicated 'Bro-in-Law' (the family bore) is present, one feels as if one is a retarded lowerclassman, being read philosophy at King's College, LoL!]

The result of all this is, as I hope I have adequately revealed & detailed, quite a most uncongenial, unstimulating and largely non-existant and highly dysfunctional  social gathering. But wait…that’s just the tip of the iceberg! There’s more! Oh GOD YES...there's much more!

The ‘baby-sis’ mentioned above has diabetes mellitus and a sweet tooth, so she’s rather on the portly side of the bodily curve and is prone to bringing gifts of doughnuts and butter-laden Walker’s Scottish Shortbread to the house (as gifts). One of the effects of this (and the usual post-menopausal hormone storms) is the fact that she breaks a sweat when the ambient house temp at her place is higher than 62 degrees (F.), and as a result usually keeps the thermostat set at about 60 (F.) in the coldest winter months. Her house, moreover (where we had this year’s T-Day dinner), is decorated in the coldest manner imaginable (white leather furnishings, bare bamboo floor, white decorations and furnishings, etc., etc.; absolutely nothing to denote any warmth, whatsoever). On top of that, since she is also a cat lady’, she keeps the windows ajar and the patio door open even during the coldest months here in Sacramento (and it can get pretty damn cold here in winter, despite our broiling hot summers!). The result of this, given that wifie and I are rather ectomorphic and easily chilled as are most ‘old farts’, is that having a dinner at her house in usually a world-class freeze-out contest. We’ve both learned from previous frosty experience that whenever we go to her house, it’s best to dress not unlike Nanook of the North just got off his sled from a seal hunting expedition on McMurdo Sound… I do, anyway, and I must present a comical appearance sitting at the table with the two other (naturally well-insulated, chuckle) sisters (clad in T-shirts) in my full Arctic Expeditionary gear.

OK, still with me thus far? At any rate, despite the fact that Baby-Sis generously hosted the gathering and prepared a hellaciously good turkey for us all to enjoy, the social protocols that obtain at ‘formal’ Chinese gatherings next take necessary precedence before any large-scale gustatory ingestion occurs. That is, with the room as cold as a well-digger’s arse, all the food is brought out and placed on the dining room table (close to the open patio door) and everyone stands around looking somewhat sheepish until proper seating order formalities have been observed. That is, eldest must sit first, followed by those in descending age. Since Baby-Sis is usually continually fluttering around, delivering food and finishing up all the final touches, and that the other (stubborn) sister stubbornly hesitates to sit until we all seat ourselves, the food quickly gets ICY cold (and I’m not exaggerating). And of course, even after everyone is seated, we still have to offer up a prayer of ‘thanksgiving’’ in good, time-honored Christian fashion (my usual dialogue at this time: “Sweetheart! If God knows what everyone is thinking, surely he knows that we are all immensely THANKFUL for his bountiful blessings! We don’t need to verbalise it! Can’t we just get on with it?!”). Silly me! Of course, we can’t! Ritual requires that by the time we all set the first forkful to mouth, everything has to be STONE COLD!

I can assure all of you, who are doubtless used (in the traditional American Western manner) to enjoying a piping HOT holiday meal, that stone-cold turkey, potatoes and dressing are about as appetizing as a bucket of icy goat-groats in cold buttermilk. 

Thus, this involved ritual is more or less the basic pattern of what every year becomes more and more of a test of forbearance on my part, as we annually repeat this exercise of trying to enjoy the questionably bountiful harvest of frigid plenteousness!

This masochistic exercise in self-denial and frustration, after the first forkful (of aforementioned) cold food is raised to buccal orifice, follows the alluded-to rather awkward conversational pause that ensues and continues until it’s time for the Baked Alaska desert (not really, since apple pie is usually served warm).

So…are you following me here?...we enjoy a stone-cold turkey dinner with all the frosty trimmings, followed by an equally ‘stony’ silence during the meal, until the by-now well-cooled-down apple pie is brought out. Usually by that time my feet have managed to go to sleep from the frigid drafts blowing through the patio door but I have somehow managed to successfully chip the hoar-frost off my dinner plate to consume most of what it has on it before my stomach becomes almost numb from the cold repast. Thankful for all the blessings? Oh yes! (…rolls eyes upwards as the words tumble wordlessly off my lips).

Seriously, folks, as I said in rethinking all this, I suppose we do have to be thankful that Uncle Albert didn’t decide to slip a shiv in his brother during the meal, or that Cousin Xavier decided not to shoot another cousin for having made a slight transgression in his careless reference to Xavier’s scum-sucking drug-trade associates, etc., etc. These things can and often do happen here in Suckatomato, so we are told by pulchitridinious Channel 3 news anchor Betty Boop, on the evening local news report at the end of the day.

But, in terms of being anywhere NEAR fulfilling as a seasonal celebratory undertaking, I can also say that that’s about all we can be thankful for here, since a family dinner that any of my own far-flung and remotely situated relatives (they exist, as upper-crust Easterners, in a higher social class than I feel comfortable in, since I’ve always enjoyed being the ‘family black sheep’) annually enjoy would be quite a sumptuous revel to partake of indeed, literally brimming over with delightfully HOT food, mulled wine and HOT apple pie! Not to mention a whole evening of stimulating conversation and expressions of kindred good humor.

It’s not that I’m ungrateful for all the above, since I truly value wifie and all of her wonderful wifely assets…cultural as well as personal… and I also have a life-long and rather profound respect for traditional Chinese cultural norms (remember, I keenly studied Chinese history & civilisation as an undergrad) but some Anglo-Saxon, Celtic part of me REALLY misses the conviviality that so-called ‘traditional’ American-style family Thanksgiving dinners customarily feature at this time of year.

But this is, after all, ‘diverse’, polyglot modern America and we all need to politically readjust our lifestyle expectations, now that all us pasty-white, European-derived folks have been summarily dismissed as having no intrinsic social, ethical or cultural value in ‘racist America’ anymore, and now that ‘traditional white man’s culture’ has been declared the cultural enemy of all the rabidly progressive ‘identity-socialists’ of color who would probably like nothing better than to ship every last one of us Euro-Caucasian relics off to the leftist liberal re-education gulags for (to borrow a phrase from the 60s' 'FIRESIGN THEATRE') socio-political regrooving.

Sigh! I should hastily reaffirm that I am really a very nice person under all this socially critical grumbling. I like well-intended, intelligent 'people of color' and I am especially fond of Native Americans and Native Pacific Islanders, too…I really am...I even love puppies and kittens![I should qualify that and say whereas I tend to think all human babies are ugly and am not especially in favor of creating more of the nasty little things, I AM specially fond of Asian infants (they tend to be as cute as puppies and kittens...go figure!)]

It’s the frequently violent expressions of  radical ‘diversity dynamics’ involving those without a sense of maladjusted behavioral appropriateness (such as indulging in mall-shootings, black-on-black violence, and vandalised looting under the pretext of ‘protesting peacefully’) that get under my skin! Does that make me an obsolete old fossilized relic of what used to be (so we are told by people half our ages) 'White Racist America', in gentler, less in-your-face times? I certainly hope not.

Happy post-Turkey-Day-prandial recovery period, my friends! May the Bluebird of COVID-19 NOT fly up your nose until a vaccine is widely available!

[PS: NO people of color were enslaved and/or subjugated by myself or my familial ancestors in the preparation of this blog!]

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POSTSCRIPT: Speaking of your (unwelcome) friend and mine, COVID-19, let me suggest an excellent book on the present pandemic that is steaming-hot off the press in 2020 (released in Nov. of this year, as a matter of fact) and contains a fascinating summary on not just the COVID-19 pandemic and all of its manifestations but a tremendously comprehensive backstory on the whole history of plagues, viruses and pandemics in general that have decimated humanity for thousands of years.

With all the often disastrously false, eroneous and just plain WRONG misinformation circulating about SARS-CoV-2 (AKA: COVID-19) at present, this is the book to read. Nothing else even comes close to covering all the findings and valid knowledge about the virus, given the fact that COVID-19 is totally new to the epidemiological world and that so little has heretofore been known about it.

The author (Heather E. Quinlan) has done a tremendous job covering all the informational bases with her well-researched, 370 page book, but more importantly this is an excellent and highly 'readable' book...not your typical dry, lifeless recitation of dull biological data.

Read this book and you will be as well-informed and up to date on what's FACT and what's horse exhaust on the COVID-19 crisis as Dr. Anthony Fauci himself! I recommend this as a former CBRN Medical Consultant who worked as an Associate of ASA, Inc., with chemical and biological threat assessments in the Middle East, during the 80s and 90s!

Especially recommended for younger individuals who persist in disregarding the very real threat that COVID-19 poses to all of us and who are helping spread the virus by partying and socially mixing, despite all warnings to the contrary.

Finally, it's written in a style that makes it completely comprehensible to all age groups, including school-age older (HS) youths.

The book's title is 'Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses: From the Plague of Athens to COVID-19'. It is available from AMAZON and all the usual book seller sources.