Thanksgiving-in-a-Can

You lived within seventy miles. From a small town population of less than a thousand to another. Seventy miles over fifty years.

You lived between a hot tarmac street and the taste of wilder dreams. I will never know what those dreams might have been for you–in your entirety–are one of my own.

I can see you now in that silhouette of heat where the air waves ripple through the sounds of your parents fighting. You stand on the ramp leading up to Chuck’s, shoulder pads still on and winning football in hand. The taste of the late Spring heat pierces the pain of another absent congratulation from your mother.

You lived between close-mindedness and the struggle of reality. What may be and what was seems to have haunted you–at least from what I can gather.

I only know you through what you were: a collection of haphazard notebooks, scribbled writings, and anecdotes from family that still recall.

You lived tormented.

I remember a story you once told me when I was far too young to understand what it meant to you. When I was a little girl in a much bigger city in that brief moment you escaped those seventy miles, that story was nothing to me. I said, okay daddy. Sure, daddy, I know.

But I didn’t. Maybe I don’t.

Because in that small town of less than a thousand where all you had was a Five Year Journal and the influence of southern heritage, you tell that story.

On an unnaturally hot night in late November–Thanksgiving–this I remember. Mama wasn’t around, but she never was. Out dancing with one of those strange men again and you hated her for it. You were sixteen. You were supposed to hate your mom. At least for a moment. But that resentment ran deeper, threaded thicker. It left a heady taste in your mouth even outside those seventy miles, that I know.

Mama wasn’t there, but your father was. I never knew what you called him, I only met him once.

You were sixteen on a hot, Thanksgiving evening with him. No siblings around, they were older then. You had no food. I remember you said you were in the back of a truck. Perhaps on the driveway where that heat permeated this fragile moment. For you, an inherent turning point in the understanding of your adolescence. For me, another long story from daddy that didn’t make any sense.

With no food and no comfort but the hard hand of a southern father, you told me about that Thanksgiving. No turkey to slice. No red wine cider spilling from styrofoam cups. No overcooked green beans on paper plates. Just you and him in the back of a pick up truck.

I imagine the buzzing of mosquitoes around you, pestering as always. I imagine a burning yellow street lamp and the scent of a sticky gust of wind. Maybe there’s the raucous cheers from another family’s pickup football game. Not yours. Not when it's you and him.

You tell me about the food you had that night. A single can of beans shared between the both of you. It's inconsequential but I wonder how much you ate. How long had you had that can before it was opened. How many hours did it spend collecting dust in the back of the cupboard before it joined you on this fateful Thanksgiving.

It wasn’t a choice–you sitting there with him and that can. It hadn’t always been that way. There was something tiding in the waters. You were the last to grow up and expected to be grown. Sounds something familiar to me.

The undercurrent was a shared disdain for your mother and the estranged difficulty of life. I will never know what it was–that difficulty. Religious pressure?

Wilder dreams?

You reminded me of what he said to you that night. The emphasis on life and its treatment towards you. Somehow in that haphazard scribbled mind of yours, a can of beans became the end of a static life. It became a moment of solace in the bitter heat between adolescence and moving beyond seventy miles.

On that night with your Thanksgiving-in-a-can, you seem to have found something lost. I will never know exactly what that misplaced comfort might have been but it seemed to have brought you peace. You carried it long.

Just you and your father on the inexplicable unfairness of life. Just you and your father in a town no one knows the name of. Just you and your father under the pressure of unknown futures and what might lie beyond.

All I know is the peace that permeated the air whenever this story would leave your lips. My favorite Thanksgiving, you would always say. I wondered why. Hot, sticky, one can.

I’ve figured it out since you've been gone. Why was it your favorite?

It was a moment you shared with him. Together, unimpeded by the outside echoes of a troubled family and the questionable roads the future might lead you on. It was a moment on an unnaturally hot November night where you had him to yourself. His mind and his voice. His care and his comfort.

It was a moment I still long to have.

Seventy miles. Fifty years. A moment never long enough.