Holidays are drone strikes: calculated and deadly. On the first Thanksgiving without you, Mom, Dad, Mike, Iris, and I fly to Phoenix to be with my in-laws. Mike’s brother Jeff, his wife Hannah and their two girls, Sylvia and Judith, have all flown in from LA. So has my father-in-law, Steve. He and my mother-in-law, Ruth, divorced after Steve came out when Mike was thirteen years old, but they’re still best friends who unite for most holidays and special occasions. It’s very beautiful and inspiring and progressive and sort of like the TV show Transparent, minus the trans part. Ruth still lives in Scottsdale, where Mike’s brother Dave and his wife Jenna recently bought a gigantic house. This is where we’ll stay for the long weekend.
While I love them all, I quickly realize it’s acutely painful to see Mike’s brothers, their wives, and their children all under one roof. My nieces, whom I adore, remind me that I’ll never have nieces or nephews who share my DNA. My mother-in-law and father-in-law have three grandchildren, including Iris, with two more on the way. Mom and Dad just have one.
Out in the world on any average sort of day, it’s hard to hear people talking about their big families, multiple siblings, and the three, four, five, six, seven, eight grandchildren their parents have. It’s hard to see photos of sprawling families communing by trees or in front of fireplaces wearing outfits in matching colors—partially because matching color schemes are absurd, but mostly because my family lost one member but shrunk an entire generation. I don’t want to see anyone’s happy fucking family, especially on a holiday. A holiday is the worst: an entire day built around togetherness.
But Thanksgiving is easier than I expect it to be, in large part because Iris is extremely sick. Vomiting, fever, rash, congestion, cough, generalized irritability. She’s on her very worst behavior and leaving a trail of snotty tissues all over the house. I feel awful for her but realize in hindsight it’s an excellent distraction. There’s so much vomit to clean up, I have no energy left to feel sorry for myself.
It’s weird—no one really mentions you over the course of the weekend and not at all on the Big Day. This happens on regular days, too, but it feels extra shitty on a holiday. And there’s no green-bean casserole. You loved green-bean casserole. It was your favorite Thanksgiving dish. You used to make Mom prepare two every year so you could save an entire casserole for leftovers. I guess it’s apropos that the dish is absent today too.
As I lie in bed that night, tears stream out of the corner of my eye onto my pillow.
“The whole point of the holidays is to be with your family, and a quarter of my family is dead,” I say to Mike.
He tries to comfort me: “A quarter of your family isn’t dead.”
“A quarter of my original family is dead.”
• • •
When we get home from Arizona, we put Iris on her second round of antibiotics for a double ear infection. She hates it. Twice a day for ten days, it’s a two-man, pin-down job involving a sippy cup, a syringe, and a pacifier. Administering the meds tonight, I remember that time you basically claimed that antibiotics were some sort of sci-fi miracle antidote that boosted one’s immune system for months at a time.
It was Christmas Day, 2004. It had snowed the night before, which was extremely unusual in Texas. I had gotten home to a room full of presents at 2:00 p.m., wearing the same clothes from the night before. Dad, who was super sick with some sort of upper-respiratory infection, made a passive-aggressive comment about how late it was or how Christmas gets later and later each year or something along those lines. Whatever it was, I took great offense because I was twenty-three and had the energy to take great offense to things.
“This isn’t one of our better Christmases,” Mom said.
I was in the kitchen building a giant lox sandwich, and all of you were sitting in the living room. Dad sat on the couch next to Mom with the blanket pulled up to his neck. You were filming all of this on the video camera.
“You’re making it worse by making me feel guilty,” I shouted from the kitchen.
Dad chimed in: “That’s what mothers are supposed to do, Stephanie. Loving mothers make their children feel guilty.”
“She’s not making me feel guilty—you are.”
“I am!?” His voice raised an octave. “What did I do!? I’m sitting here with a blanket over me. I’m dying. Ever since I quit smoking, my health has gone to hell. I better start smoking again just to save my life.”
I laughed loudly. This. This was one of my favorite things about how our family functioned. Even in the midst of an argument, we could always break for a laugh.
“You should. It works for me,” you said.
“Did you go outside to smoke last night in the middle of a snow storm?” Dad asked.
“Several times.”
“That’s unbelievable. You could have had pneumonia by now.”
And then: “I took a Zithromax, like, two months ago. My white cells are through the roof.”
Tonight, as I fight to get the medicine into my kid’s mouth as she writhes on the ground like a piece of bacon in a frying pan, I think of your magical white blood cells.
And I laugh.