The Opium & Valium Would Take A Hit

A Thanksgiving Story.

For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be. - Scrooged

My grandmother was a proper woman who got ready every morning at a well lit vanity. My grandfather graduated top of his class from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and founded his own engineering firm. 

Their home sat on a beautiful lake in Indiana and they were proud members of the Foxcliff Golf Club which was evident by their collection of fox coasters, figurines and glassware. 

They had three children. 

My mom, the oldest, had me when she was a senior in high school. She was arrested twice while I was young. She drove the getaway car for an armed bank robber (her boyfriend) and she was an accomplice to that same man’s cocaine dealing business, by then he was her husband.

She and my grandparents got along about as well as you might expect. 

My uncle, the middle child and prodigal son, never lived up to my grandparents’ ambitions for him. He wasn’t much good at school so instead of being a successful engineer like his dad, he worked odd jobs and just got by.

He was married to a woman who showed up to Thanksgiving one year with her two front teeth missing. They’d been knocked out in a bar fight.

Getting in the door on Thanksgiving meant surviving a swift punch in the arm by my jovial uncle followed by a bear hug that hurt almost as much. He was a good man.

My aunt, the baby, was married to the boy next door. Literally. His parents also had a wonderful view of the lake and belonged to the Foxcliff Country Club. They were married in a beautiful church ceremony. I was the flower girl.

We got together one day every year as a family. Thanksgiving. My grandparents, my mom, my uncle and his wife and my aunt and her husband. All eight grandchildren were there. I was the oldest. Beccah was the youngest. 

My stepfather wasn’t invited. They said it was because he had been arrested and that sort of thing wasn’t allowed in their home. But we all knew what wasn’t allowed in their home was