The other relatives

This was the first Thanksgiving in almost two decades that I have spent at a family home--once again not my family, since they are scattered to the winds, but here in Connecticut with Ferrett's family. And not even really his family; his step-family, mostly, the siblings and their children of his step-dad. It was an interesting experience. I know that early on there were tensions between some of these match-ups, but they appear to have mellowed over the years to that jokey acceptance that, hey, we did the best we could to raise the kids, and this is what we've got (amusingly, the children of the rigid, born-again sister whose vicious lack of acceptance of anyone else are the only ones who don't get mentioned, being the ones who became heroin addicts and out-of-wedlock parents and criminals).

It's fascinating to watch inside family jokes from the outside. I was never made to feel unwelcome, never treated with anything less than affection, yet there is a certain level of humor that I can only enjoy for the fact that I'm simply not getting it. These people have a history together, one that is not all simply but one abut which they can joke and laugh in the mellow warmth of a humid kitchen, too many bodies squeezed into a small house. The house sighs and relaxes and lets them all in, because it is part of the history, it remembers, too.

It wasn't my nostalgia, but it was a happy nostalgia, and it embraced me as well.

Next up: Thanksgiving redux on Saturday with the NEXT set of relatives.