Ode to Oy

At home in suburban Chicago on the Monday before Thanksgiving, I should have anticipated that the chilly morning raindrops would turn into snowflakes by noon. I should have also anticipated that the wintry precipitation would precipitate a mad rush to the local grocery store and a concurrent dip in the value of human life. A pervasive fear of melting (or possibly ruining a pricey new blow dry) turned parking into a contact sport. And the sudden threat of a potato salad famine resulted in a crowd at least three deep at the prepared foods counter. The joyous holiday season is upon us, and it's all about survival of the fittest. Let's face it, peace and love and the spirit of giving are nice ideas, but they just can't compete with good science.

With my nerves still frayed from a death defying attempt to pick up some staples on Monday, I woke to an early text from my mother on Tuesday. Again, I should have anticipated that my iphone's weather forecast for rain and above-freezing temperatures in New York on Wednesday would be so displeasing to the media that reporters everywhere (remember what I said about survival of the fittest?) would be chatting incessantly about yet another storm of the century and the prospect of thousands of American travelers not making it home for Thanksgiving. My mother was begging me to change my own flight and my daughter's flight from New Orleans so we could arrive before the apocalypse. I ignored her. Later in the day, I relented and called the airline. The nice man on the line politely put me on hold for a respectable number of minutes so he could get over his laugh attack and then came back on to tell me there were no seats available on earlier flights. I rechecked the weather forecast on my iphone; still no snowflakes. There was nothing I could do, so I went ahead with my manicure and hoped for the best.

Every year, holiday excitement is accompanied by a fair amount of holiday dread, and it seems to start earlier and earlier. This year, Walmart moved Black Friday up a week, and the pumpkins decorating the trees in the center of my town were replaced during the first week of November by strings of lights shaped into snowmen and reindeer and fake presents. All this jump on merriment simply adds to the stress -- the anxieties about travel and overcooking the turkey and the hours on end spent with family members you otherwise don't see. Or about the hours on end you won't get to spend with family members you otherwise don't see. Even in the most dysfunctional families, the only thing worse than family gatherings is no family gatherings, or family gatherings without one hundred per cent attendance.

We all go through this, every year. Lost rituals, changing dynamics, dashed expectations. Tis the season to be melancholy, yet we all look forward to it for some reason. Are we that complex, or are we just stupid. Maybe it all boils down to survival of the fittest. If we remembered, each year, what a pain in the ass the holidays are, we would stop celebrating, and then what? No more memories of freezing our butts off making sure the turkey in the deep fryer on the deck doesn't blow us all to kingdom come. No more memories of long waits on the tarmac, of pretending to eat one cousin's annual cranberry mousse despite an aversion to pink food, of gastric distress so severe your jeans don't zip again for months. No more good stories.

Then again, there's nothing wrong with a non-story. The camera crews wandered around Ohare on Wednesday morning looking bored. The arrival and departure screens were filled with rows of "on time." At LaGuardia, things were just as grim. I smiled alluringly at one cameraman, hoping he would train his lens on me instead of the decidedly uninteresting screens, but he remained optimistic that cancellations and delays would soon take over. Finally, as I waited for my daughter's flight at Newark, a reporter was bored enough to talk to me. This was my moment, and I was not about to let it pass. I told him all about my own family's version of this year's non-story. The panic. The phone calls and texts. The sleepless nights. All for nothing. My flight was not only on time but I also had an entire row to myself. The kids behind me didn't cry. Nobody near me threw up. My daughter's flight was only a few minutes late. Even the descent through the dark rain clouds felt no more death defying than a child's roller coaster ride. Yawn.

But I got my name in the paper! Okay, it was a local New Jersey rag, but my story made it in, the lead three paragraphs in an article that contained two other even less remarkable stories. And we are heading out, shortly, to celebrate our family's umpteenth Thanksgiving in Connecticut. Attendance will not be perfect -- it hasn't been for some time -- and I will miss the ones who aren't there. But I will joyfully eat way too much deep fried turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts and macaroni and cheese and deep fried pickles and whatever other new item we add to the menu this year. And I will pretend to eat too much cranberry mousse.

And I will put my skinny jeans away for a few months, and, eventually, after the distress passes, I will look forward to next year.