the rose of kiev

Dave and I padded down the seven cream-carpeted stairs and joined the rest of the grandchildren around the TV. My brother and cousin Jake had eyes riveted to the screen, elbows extended, thumbs a blur: the Boyer competition had already been aroused in a James Bond video game. My 17-year-old sister lay sleeping on the pale yellow-and-blue striped couch, long brown hair concealing her face and the shoulders of her wine-red cowl neck sweater. My youngest cousin, Libby, was abosrbed in the smaller screen of her pink and heavily-stickered PSP. This down here was our sanctuary before dinner, we 6 of the 9 grandchildren, when you count Dave. Unfortunately, I knew I couldn't hide for long in the basement. As the now-married oldest granddaughter, I had fallen in a gap where I was no longer a child but not quite an adult. But it still meant that I had to go upstairs. It was a pleasant surprise to find the kitchen a well-oiled machine, my father videotaping as my uncle and father shuffled a s...

The Holiday Season has been progressing in complexity during my life. The first 14 years were the simplest because we simply shuffled between my dad's family (a special version of laughter and tensity) and my mother's family (the bigger the gathering, the more step-relatives I never knew I had). Complications increased when my parents marriage ended, but after 8 years of that schedule (Christmas Eve in Mansfield with mom, then back to Columbus with Dad for Christmas morning) we had finally adjusted. And then I went and got married and threw in a whole other family on top of it all. This was Dave and I's first year negotiating what, in my family, is already an area of extreme territorialism. Yeah, there were a couple fights. In the end, my gracious Dave volunteered we spend Thanksgiving with my father's family. For the first time in a few years 3 of the 4 children were going to be at my grandparents' Akron home with most of the grandchildren, so I called my Nana to t...

so we just had our Thanksgiving linner...dunch...some meal between lunch and dinner, you know what I mean. And the meal was good and all, but that totally wasn't the best part of the holiday. Dude, the day isn't even over yet, and that is SO freaking exciting. so I'm chilling with my cousin Brian in his bedroom up here in Akron, and enjoying our down time. we're full of turkey triptophin (or whatever the sleepy enzyme in is that bird) and he's kindly allowed me to use his apple laptop. *pets laptop* purty....shiny....ooo...*wipes slobber from keyboard* so this is an experience for me - there's no describing the high I get from this. mm...shiny apple laptop... okay, I'm going to stop making out with my cousin's computer - I don't think he'll appreciate drool stains on here. speaking of Bri...we've only been together a couple of hours, and already we're thick as thieves and twice as much trouble. inside the first half hour, all the cousins ...

It's going to be SUCH a great Thanksgiving this year. I don't get nearly as excited about the turkey holiday as I do over Christmas, but this year it's going to be wonderful chaos: my aunt Sharon and her son Brian and daughter Libby, my Uncle Scott and Aunt Susan and their son Jake, and then Dad and me and Natalie and Erick all squished into my grandparents' Akron home. Will there be blood and carnage? You better believe it. But am I TOTALLY revved for this thanksgiving? No doubt about it. That's what makes this thanksgiving SO worth looking forward to and bearing interrogation and hiding in the bathroom away from my grandmother - Brian will be there with me, my best bud, my long lost identical twin, my brother from another mother. He's the one person who can incite me to troublemaking, and boy can we get into it. I completely forget that I'm a legal adult and go at it with him in everything. I talk with him on the phone in the bathtub, and there have been s...