This Thanksgiving will forever go down in history as That Time I Spent an Entire Year looking forward to hosting my own Thanksgiving in my own house for my Husband’s family, nearly a lifelong goal of mine, only to contract a cold from hell a few days before game time, but flat out refused to let it affect my fantasy plans or anyone’s holiday, and so I pushed through like a mad woman assisted by Sister in Laws and Sudafed, to the point of Fever, and SOMEHOW IT ALL HAPPENED, in fact I miraculously started to feel better an hour before dinner was served, and it still managed to be the most marvelous Thanksgiving ever, with two kinds of stuffing and family everywhere, or MAYBE I SWEAT DREAMT IT? A few of my favorite images from my Fever dream:

Morrison somehow arranged our dining room so it fit 14 people / WE GOT TO USE ALL OF OUR PLACEMATS / WHY IS THIS SO EXCITING TO ME / DO I NEED HELP:

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With much advice and assistant from sister in Law Jacy and also the internet, I roasted my first turkey and no one (yet) died:

Tiny people literally everywhere:

SIL Anne with that portrait mode:

Featured dishes: my sausage, apple and fennel cornbread stuffing, and MIL Cam’s Chile Relleno casserole (cheese / eggs / sour cream / chile rellenos / ABSURDLY GOOD)

A large percentage of my favorite people, all in one place:

Going through tiny baby brother Tim’s recently released wedding pictures, and I’d just like to leave these here, as a helpful guide, for the next time you’re at a wedding with your parents, and just aren’t sure what to do with your body / face:

When I remember to get my hair cut, I always leave the place feeling like an elegant, effortless Body Wash Commercial, stepping out of a white limo on a Loop,

But then I quickly remember the girl inside, who recedes into her chins, pouting at the family wedding because everyone ate all of the mini quiches before she could have one.

I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER THAT THIS IS WHY I WAS POUTING.

My Tiny baby brother Tim got married on Friday, to a  gorgeous, grounded and kind cardiac nurse — and by kind nurse, I mean she left her rehearsal dinner to escort a family member who was having a heart event* to the ER (*what playwrights call bad heart things.)  I don’t know what I was expecting, watching my youngest brother, who I shared a room with for years, who I think the largest world of, who I think has the the tenderest of hearts and sharpest of wits though he never presents with either — marry the girl he loves — but basically every time I caught him looking at her with any sort of love, the kind of of love that shuts out the world and the wedding and all expectations and even the past, I sobbed through my eyelash glue for 17 seconds.

I didn’t have to do a toast, but obviously, Dan and Pete toasted Tim. The toasts were beautiful, laced with emotional restraint and military humor and humble admissions of what it feels like to look up to your younger brother, and obviously, I sat as close to all of them as humanly possible while these toasts were happening, like I’m basically sitting on Sarah’s lap. Another obviously: I took a million pictures because it’s rare to see my three brothers together, feeling something. Traveling back to LA last night, I looked at each of these pictures, trying to find the best one(s) so that I might delete some… but really, each one I took is essential. While they all look basically the same, each captures a tiny feeling felt by a brother, warm stabs otherwise covered.

PETE LOOKS AT FLOOR SO AS TO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT:

TIM DRINKS BEER SO AS TO NOT FEEL

DAN LOOKS AT CELING SO AS TO NOT SOB

DAN DOES STAND UP WORTHY OF LATE NIGHT TELEVISION, TIM’S LUNGS LEAK TEARS

DAN’S TOAST GETS PHYSICAL, TIM THINKS ABOUT BEATING HIM UP LATER, PETE FOCUSES ON CHANDELIER SO AS TO NOT HUG TIM

As a girl with three brothers, I like to play a game with myself in which I pick a favorite brother. It’s riveting, as you never quite know WHO I’m going to pick. It’s usually the brother that I most recently hung out with, as whenever I see one of them I leave feeling, now that. THAT is definitely my favorite brother, thus bumping whatever brother I saw previously out of the coveted spot (LIKE I SAID, RIVETING  WITH VERY VERY HIGH STAKES). This week’s favorite brother award goes to Pete, for his buoyant energy and seasonal patriotism:

But then also we’ve got our runners ups, Dan and Tim, who are definitely, without a doubt, my second and third favorite brothers,

who also have no idea that I play this game, nor, I would imagine, do they care. POINTS FOR CONFIDENCE AND EASE / AW HECK, THEY’RE ALL MY FAVORITE

This charm belonged to my great-grandma, Leah Lopin, my middle namesake. I met her a handful of times before she died in the 90’s, and I mostly remember necklaces and laughter and white teeth. This charm lives next to my perfume, and yesterday I stopped and looked it and remembered: she was the first kid to be born in America. Her Jewish parents fled Russia in the early 1900’s to escape religious persecution by the Czar, and by persecution I definitely mean  senseless murder. ALL OF THIS TO SAY, they were welcomed, here. They started a life, here. And so I now have a life, here. Let this never be lost on me, and let it inform and shape my view and activism for those trying to enter from Honduras and El Salvador and Guatemala who only want THE EXACT SAME THING.

For Father’s Day, I would like to post this picture that is not really of my Father, but of Myself very dressed up looking adoringly at my Father, because Father’s Day and he’s wonderful and supportive and always there when I need him but LOOK AT MY DRESS WILL I EVER LOOK LIKE THAT AGAIN OR WILL I JUST GET OLDER AND SQUISHIER UNTIL I AM THE AGE OF MY FATHER IN THE PICTURE SORRY DAD I MADE IT ABOUT MYSELF

…..when you look at a picture of your Dad as a kid with your Grandparents are your own current age and recognize faces you’ve made and feelings you’ve felt and are suddenly in a single moment aware of past, present and future and it all feels like one thing and you can almost see yourself as a tiny piece of salad caught in your Grandma’s teeth, or in her mind?

As I may have mentioned here before, I tend to read most of my reviews because a.) GOSH, I LOVE PAIN  and b.) I truly feel like I can learn from them,  if I read them with one eye open  (keeping the other eye that scans every moment and room I’m in for reasons to doubt myself carefully closed.) I happened upon this review of the Chicago production of the Cake the other day, and for reasons I decided NOT to unpack in a middle of the night email to the critic, it upset me deeply. I let it go for a few days, then yesterday, decided to revisit it, because again, I LOVE PAIN and also because with the initial sting having settled, I wanted to see what I could learn, as I’m still tweaking the play. And lo and behold, an angel woman named Andrea G. had left this beautifully articulated comment on the review  (my favorite parts in bold):

You are missing the point. Hear me out. There it was- my life on the stage. That NEVER happens. The real side of being a gay woman. Finally something REAL. You still have to love your family. You still have to reach across the table. Because we still need to live in our current lives. Della is lovable because most of the time your family member is lovable. I have a ton of Dellas in my live. And I wish I could be braver like Jen and work through them all. But you choose those like Della who really love you and you work it through. So you both grow. And it HURTS. Are you not gay? Or are you not a woman? Because that is the way women deal with things. Slowly and painfully. I’ll give this, then you give that, slowly. If you are really really lucky it ends well. I am still bruised as I am sure every lesbian who left the theater. You say it is intellectually and emotionally unnutritious. That is INSANE. This is family not the government or your job. You have to give people time to change, reevaluate and change some more. Dissuading others from seeing it because it doesn’t fit into the cookie cutter liberal “should,” is keeping people from actually seeing their lives in art. Not a fantasy of how life should be, but how it is. Because the play you are asking for wouldn’t hit home for me. It is a fantasy for me- where I sit down with my aunt and have a conversation about identities It wouldn’t be emotional because it would never happen. Because that is what your said privileged people do- conversations about identities. Not us poor blue collar folks. And your attitude towards Della is elitist and condescending. Yes she is a bigot. But your (and Macy’s attitude) is not so nice either.

ANDREA G., you are why I write plays. Thank you for speaking for me, with me.

College friends and soul sisters Blaine and Carrie and I barely get to see each other, especially now that I live on the other side of the country and they each had small humans exit their bodies recently. So being together in the same place requires great forethought and planning,  and whenever we manage to make it happen, we take so many pictures it’s like we’re members of a sacred endangered species, like we might soon disappear from the earth, which really, WE MIGHT, AND OTHER DARK THINGS YOU DISCUSS WITH YOUR FRIENDS WHEN YOU’RE 35 BECAUSE YOUR MORTALITY HAS NOW SETTLED AROUND YOU LIKE EVERY SPRAY FROM BATH AND BODY WORKS . We also discussed Pants. Lookit these beautiful Rhinos:

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