She would never date someone like me

It’s a typical family Thanksgiving weekend.

My mother and sister are laying on the bed watching the movie 27 dresses. They are swathed in 10 different blankets of varying sizes and stitchings because Mom always appreciates her lodgings to be cold. Not frigid, mind you, but just over the Mason-Dixon line that separates comfortable from chilling. She likes her thermostat set to Virginia rather than Alabama, as it were. And she always appreciates her blankets thick, but not too ample. It’s like her habit of returning coffee that is made too strong. She says she likes not fully being awake after the first cup thus giving her an excuse to go get more. I always silently think: “well why get terrible coffee if you don’t want to wake up! Just get tea!”

So as I was saying, it’s a typical Thanksgiving break.

Mother and sister curled up in one room watching a movie about weddings and true love. The movie is an unabashed Jane Austen pretender but replaces the cherished bits of hard realism and feminist independence Austen throws in each of her novels with scenes about as emotionally nutritious as cotton candy. I get up and see what Ben is doing.

Ben is alone on the couch in the living room, watching a direct-to-video Invasion of the Bodysnatchers influenced neoWestern based on a series of currently popular multiplayer computer games.

Apparently family time, in our household, means existing in the same general residential space as one another but interacting as little as possible. Whenever I inspect my family pictures, I always remember my mother’s herculean efforts to bring us to the same room for longer than 5 minutes. And the pictures are all posed because we were never just naturally residing in the same place.

But make no mistake, I am just as guilty. I’ve been working in the guest room on law school applications for the last hour and currently have open web browsers that A. discuss the merits of using federal funds to build high-speed trains B. consider the functionality of various low weight two-person alpine tents and C. weigh the pros and cons of the starting lineup for my Sunday fantasy football team.

So, I get frustrated. I am determined to spend some family time while on a vacation with my family. Even if it is spent settled around the numbing glow of the television, I figure it’s better than nothing.

I shrug off the sensation that maybe silent time gathered around the most banal of movies is worse than nothing, and sit on the foot of the bed, watching the movie with Mother and Sister.

I come in at a particularly awful portion of the film where the main character is hurriedly plowing through a monologue about how her one true love (wherever he may be) crystallizes happiness and dreams and how every woman will one day be a proud celebrity at her own wedding. If she is wistful and anxious and suffers enough, God is sure to deliver on that promise. Her man will come and complete her life. I sit and watch and feel slightly ill. The word “huckster” comes to mind. The words “insidious” “shameless” and “predatory” quickly follow.

I look over to both ladies and see they are both reveling in the afterglow of their silliness injection, so I refrain from making any particularly abrasive comments until the camera swings around to another flat, contrived character and the scene is over.

“Ahem” I exclaim

“I know the complexities of love and desire and fulfillment are much too intricate for a picture of this undertaking, but the general lack of nuance in this film is ridiculous!” “How can you like this stuff?”

I’m in for it now. I’ve killed their buzz.

Yet, this comment fails to instigate the outrage I expected in mom and sis. They calmly reply that they know the story is a farce and the characters are all schemed and scripted but they still believe every word of it anyway. They both give a smile of satisfaction.

I am beside myself. I immediately regret deserting the safety of the Internet and it’s agreeable viewpoints.

The viewmasters inside their brains are furiously clicking away through reels labeled: “wedding” and “vigorous knights in gleaming armor.”

I want to rouse them and. I can’t let this nonsense continue. I see my heartbroken sister in 10 years realizing that love doesn’t actually solve all your problems.

I can’t fathom how my 55 year old mother who hasn’t dated in twelve years and was divorced by the man she believed to be her true love when their children were 8, 5, and 3 could even think of furthering this vicious cycle of absurd, fairytale hope. And yet, she still expects: (to paraphrase a friend who was paraphrasing literature) “Mr Darcy to come knocking at the door.”

I wish I could understand it or explain it. But I can’t. And I am speechless. I can’t question the sanity of her approach. She is alone with her cats and she’s waiting for the gentleman with roses to come greet her.

And to rub it in she remarks to me: “You’ll feel the same way too one day, you just haven’t met the right girl.”

And then it hits me, for all my righteousness, I believe she is telling the truth. It is a streak of irrationality slicing through my brain like a forgotten railroad overgrown with grass from misuse. Upon hearing her comment, the train switches tracks with ease.

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I quietly think I should be shouting “Eureka” (ir if I was British: “By Jove!”) to announce my discovery, but I can’t let them notice my acknowledgment of her analysis. I outwardly deny the accusation, but my thoughts immediately turn to Her.

She is exactly what flashes through my mind when my mothers utters the words: right girl. The viewmaster in my head starts clicking through memory slides. I am furious for letting this happen.

I skulk away to go watch the movie with Ben.

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But I can’t get my mother’s comments out of my head. She is correct, though only partially. She believes the ache and the wanting and the helplessness is yet to occur. I know I already have it. Bad. And that’s why I should trust what my mother says. Just this once anyway.

While the tremors of machine gun noises and zombie moans erupt out of the surround sound speakers perched close to my left ear, I can’t help but think of my terrible realization.

I am unable to avoid this irrational shadow and now it consumes me. And I am aware my mother has always maintained I will be seized in this cosmic euphoria. It will drill into me and settle in my skull. A song will come on the radio and my mind is unable to settle on anything else, like a fly on a sticky trap.

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It’s like I’ve been living in a foreign country. I speak the language, I’m getting along ok. I trip up every now and then, but I’m passably fluent enough to function. It’s a rational life, normal and untextured. Dichromatic. Without gradation or unnecessary description because I lack the verbal faculties for either.

Being with Her is like suddenly stumbling across a traveler who speaks English. The thoughts I was unable to verbalize come pouring out. There is a comfort–a naturalness–because the language is ours. I would be fine the rest of my life speaking the alien language. I would have nothing to complain about. But I would never have that ability to shade and color and create. She gives me that power to distinguish and parse and tease. I remember a language I had long forgotten because of her. She is innate.

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I’ll be speaking with someone else and I’ll wonder what she is doing, or thinking about. Or who she is with.

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My sister later remarks that she would “never date someone as cynical as me.” And instead of returning verbal fire, I smile. Someday I’ll tell her.

Perhaps it’s not a typical Thanksgiving break.