Grazie.

As someone who has been through 32 semi-traditional Thanksgiving dinners, it's probably strange to admit that I do not enjoy most of the food.  This is a terrible secret that I would never reveal at the dinner table, as I'm fully aware of the amount of sweat, heavy lifting, and constant stirring that created carefully-prepared and equally-carefully-presented dishes.  Our family's spread, in the few seconds between placement and consumption, looks like a goddamn Rockwell painting.

Even before my dive into near-vegetarianism, most dishes were met with an apathetic "meh".  I would pile corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and turkey onto a plate and salt the fuck out of it and eat just enough to justify consuming between five and 900 buns.  This was, obviously, a parental decision (i.e. "no more buns until you eat real food"), but this unwritten rule stuck with me throughout adulthood.

There are, of course, exceptions.  This year my mom prepared a pile of roasted root vegetables that was stunning (particularly the brussels sprouts).  The stuffing, my grandmother's recipe, carried the appropriate amount of nostalgia that eating it reminded me of being a precocious toddler and snatching handfuls of stuffing from the serving dish as they sat on my kitchen counter.  My aunt's caesar salad is consistently amazing.  And I don't mean to necessarily discount the core Thanksgiving dishes.  Everyone seems to enjoy them, thoroughly, and I would be shocked if 30+ people were just humoring each other.

For years, Thanksgiving was held at my house.  I'd wake up to the smell of buns (oh god, OH GOD THOSE BUNS), stagger into the family room and watch the parade, and occasionally assist with heavy lifting or table setting.  The day began around noon, when my great aunt would show up and sit in the living room and yell conversation to my mom (who, by that time, was hurriedly getting changed and putting on makeup).  I was usually the coat-taker, creating a respectable pile on my parents' bed, as well as the guy usually called upon to carry food in from other relatives' cars.  In my teenage years I was also the valet and would drive my grandfather to Penn Hills for an hour or two to spend some time with his family.

Thanksgiving is, to the Marino family, actually two full meals...a pasta course around 1 or 2 and then the turkey-plus-other-stuff in the late afternoon.  I discovered, today, that this was not a very long tradition.  My uncle decided, maybe 15-20 years ago, that he wanted to make some ravioli...and the rest is history.  It's baffling, to me, that this tradition started in my lifetime, as I can't honestly remember a Thanksgiving where I did not eat two enormous meals.

After dinner...uh...the second dinner...whoever did not have a hand in creating food was responsible for washing the dishes.  This was not a steadfast rule.  I usually fell into this category, although sometimes I was pulled aside for breaking down tables or getting the desert buffet set up.  I know a lot of this might sound like a catering job...because it was.  The day featured anywhere from 25 to 40 people, often with a few coming and going between the two meals.  My parents' house, graciously called a "ranch" home, but was actually a modular house that was built in one place and then set on a foundation in Irwin, was not technically equipped to handle an ever-growing family.  Fire codes be damned, we made it work.

We had dinner at my aunt's house this year, and it was truly bizarre to show up there and things were already in motion.  It was even stranger to just sit down and talk to people instead of running all over the house on the little chores that Mom would snap at me from the kitchen.  I had all this free time, and I slipped easily into filling it the same way everyone else did.  I watched some football.  I made drawings with my cousins' kids (all of whom fall between "adorable" and "goddamn adorable").  I sat and talked to people that I seem to only see once a year.  I drank whiskey and ginger ale.  I stood on the porch smoking a cigarette while my daughter stomped around in the snow.  I listened to my grandfather tell the same four stories over and over.

There will be a day when my parents' generation refuses to host a Thanksgiving dinner(s), and rightfully so.  It takes weeks to prepare, requires cramming dozens of people into a space meant to hold ten, and lasts all day long, with little to no downtime.

But when that day comes I will, gladly...insistently...pick up the slack.

I won't do it because I love the food (obviously).  Or because I don't mind the days and days of work, or the planning, or the firm knowledge that I would be on my feet and doing something for at least 12 hours that day.  I'll do it because I need today.  I want today.

It's more than tradition, I think.  It's like folklore, passing down the customs of this crazy, extroverted, Italian family to my children, and their children.  We'll eat pasta for lunch because that's what we've always done (or so I thought), and that will be a satisfactory explanation, and maybe enough for our kids to do the same.  Some aunt will gather up all the kids and take a walk around the block because that's what has always happened.  All of the men will huddle around the television for eight hours of football.  Salt and pepper will always be just out of arms' reach.  Someone will fall asleep in a chair despite desperately loud individuals sitting all around him.  Kids will get yelled at for being too boisterous and they'll retreat upstairs (or downstairs), and we'll eventually miss them and coax them back until they get too noisy again.  People will leave in bursts, arms will grow weary from hugging.  At least six people will tear up.  At least one will cry.

After three decades, a lot of the memories blur...but I always manage one.  This year might be tossing one of the kids into the air from the couch, and remembering when my own daughter was that small and that captivated by free-falling.  Over and over.  But first I had to pinky promise that I wasn't going to tickle her (this was apparently a concern of hers with any family member).  On the 10th toss I said that I was worried I was going to smack her head into the ceiling, and the game changed to "hold me up so my head touches the ceiling."  And I obliged, because that kid brainwashed me.

I don't really care if this blog bites me in the ass.  If my family's reading this (and I'm sure most of them are passed out from excessive tryptophan and general exhaustion), I hope you guys know I'm serious.  Thanksgiving is not something I'm going to let die.

And, hell, my house has a ton of parking.  That's a huge bonus.

A Break From Smoker's Cough

By my best estimate, this will be the 793rd written correspondence regarding cessation that's reached the ears of the internet.

My first go at quitting occurred about 12 days after starting, back in 1999.  I was driving home after working an 8pm - 4am shift at Eat n' Park, feeling especially punchy and blasting Radiohead in my 1994 tempo, partly to ensure alertness as I hit the highway but mostly to celebrate the aura of failure and despondence that I've cultivated throughout my late teens/early adulthood.  Radiohead, as you can imagine, is ideal background music for such an itinerary.  Those were weird times, as I'm sure all of us experienced moments where, in retrospect, we'd want to tell our younger selves something along the lines of grow the hell up even though that's exactly what we were doing anyway.

I was down to the filter on my Camel Red (or "Kamel" Red, since R.J. Reynolds would try anything to encourage coolness in smoking).  I smoked it quickly, because January is the opposite of an optimal time to have the windows rolled down when going 70 on the parkway.  And the weather contributed to what I did next.  Hell, that may have been my only motivation.

I tossed the filter through the open driver's side window, and then grabbed the pack of cigarettes (which must have had 17 or 18 cigarettes in it), and threw that out as well.

Sorry, nature.

Impulse decisions are the underdog when it comes to permanence, and I'm sure my choice to toss $3.00 (those were the days, when packs did not cost as much as a fast food meal) onto a snow-dusted highway was more of a statement about control and reliance than it was a genuine desire to quit.  When you're just 12 days into smoking you don't display the usual symptoms...I didn't spend the first 30 minutes of my mornings coughing.  I didn't wheeze when exercising.  Even my clothes were, for the most part, free of stale smoke.

20 minutes later I was back in my apartment.  30 minutes later I was asleep, or falling asleep to The Matrix on my iMac (usually before the part where they're escaping the agents that have captured Morpheus...there was a scratch on the DVD that would make that scene freeze).  I woke up the next day, started a pot of coffee, and then waltzed across the street to Sunoco and picked up three packs of Camel Lights.

The financial impact of smoking is more alarming to me than the health detriments.  The coughing and wheezing are part of my normality, along with the knowledge that a flu or heavy cold seems to drag on for weeks.  I anticipate waking up and working to clear my lungs of obstructions, usually succeeding at some point in the shower, when the humidity and light pounding on my back loosens everything up.  I can speed through two packs a day on the weekend, when I'm home and there are plenty of windows to smoke out of.  When I'm at work I manage a cigarette an hour, sometimes more if the day is particularly stressful.  I rarely buy cartons of cigarettes, instead opting for daily trips to CVS or a gas station and buying cigarette packs in pairs.  At CVS (which is the cheapest place around to buy my band), it's $10.98 after tax to buy two packs.  $11 a day, almost every day...between $300 and $330 a month, more if I buy the occasional pack at the convenience store near the office, or a bar.

Besides my mortgage, smoking is my most exorbitant monthly expense.  It's unjustifiable, even if I took that $300 and spent it on monthly supplies of really good scotch, or started a Faberge egg collection.  Wasting money is wasting money, but I have the impression that there are better ways to waste it, at least.  Ways that don't so immediately contribute to my physiological state.

My most recent (and most earnest) attempt at quitting was December, 2011.  My wife at the time and I both got on Chantix, and both agreed that we're probably going to be miserable and bitchy and have nightmares, but smoking was already an expense neither of us could afford.  I think we lasted 5 days...and most scientific studies on cessation suggest that our urge to pick up a cigarette after that long was 100% psychological, as the period of nicotine withdrawal was on its last legs.

Chantix, by the way, is my enemy.  Back in Houston when I talked about quitting with a doctor he prescribed Wellbutrin, which was classified as an anti-depressant but had the side-effect of encouraging smokers to quit.  I didn't feel any less depressed (I don't think I was self-reflective enough, at the time, to be depressed), but I also did not find smoking any less desirable.  Chantix, however, made me goddamn insane.  I could not keep liquids down with any certainty, particularly in the morning.  I would have awful night terrors.  Sweating was a constant.  I'm pretty sure I smelled different, too.  More medicinal.

Smoking was something I did in private for years..."private" in the sense that I did not openly share that information with every person in my life.  My roommates knew.  My girlfriend knew.  My coworkers knew better than anyone, as most of my post-work plans involved the New York Times crossword, a cup of coffee, and a late night in the smoking section.  Most of my relatives did not know.  My parents did not know.  They found out maybe six or seven years ago, when I was rushed to the hospital in what I now believe was the first ever case of H1N1.  The attending nurse asked if I smoked, and since I genuinely thought I might die, I answered honestly.

That pseudo-privacy turned cessation into a covert operation.  If 15 people in my life knew I smoked, then maybe 3 knew when I was trying to quit.  It's an entirely backward rationale, fueled by the flawed notion that quitting smoking is a sign of weakness...because it makes me feel weak.  That's what made something like agreeing to quit on the "Great American Smokeout" day a terrifying prospect.

I would have thought that the marketing department at the American Cancer Society (if they have one) could have conjured up a more appropriate name for this day.  It's prone to misinterpretation, to me.  I would have gone with Stop Expediting Your Death Day or Save $5-$10 Day or, more self-deprecating, Stop Being Stupid Day.

It was just another e-mail from the "Wellness" team at my office.  The same people that send out offers for discounted massages and lets me know when the next meditation class is being held, or where to pick up my pedometer for the Walktober (now THAT'S a clever name).  I read it, and dismissed it in my usual stubborn manner when it comes to people telling me what to do.  I'll quit when I'm ready to quit, dammit.

A few minutes later I got a message from Cindy (name changed in the event that coworkers don't appreciate being mentioned on such a permanent platform as a blog).  I've known Cindy for years, almost as long as her husband, who worked in the same department as me 11 years ago.  She asked if I was doing the smokeout and if she could "adopt me".  Adopting a smoker meant generally encouraging their decision to quit, loosely keeping tabs on their whereabouts, motivating and trying like hell to quell urges.

I didn't respond right away.  I had no intent on quitting, even for a day.

A few hours later Gabe walked up to my desk and asked me if I'd been adopted yet.  I said that I hadn't, and he mentioned that his entire team wanted to sponsor me.

It's a weird mix of gratefulness and embarrassment.  The latter because I felt typecast, as if being a smoker was a characteristic that people used to describe me.  That wasn't a particularly surprising sensation, particularly at work, where I'm not prone to sharing life stories.  People will see what they see and don't usually speculate on the rest.  At happy hours, during lunch, after work, I lit a cigarette.  That may have not summed up my soul in the way that I angrily presumed it did, but I didn't give them a hell of a lot else to work with.

But the former was something I did not expect.  That these people cared.  That they were willing to sacrifice time and energy to encourage me to do something difficult.

So now, in my inbox at work, there's a stack of "adoption papers".  And on November 21st, from at least midnight to 11:59pm, I will not touch a cigarette.  I will probably stuff my face full of gum (nicotine or otherwise).  I will probably take advantage of an e-cigarette purchase I made weeks ago.  I will probably take hourly laps around the office.  I'll probably crumble, at least once.  But people have my back.  And they'll pick me up and brush the dust off and say I know this is hard...that's why we're here.

It is hard.  But maybe, when the day is done and my heartbeat is slower than its been in years and my blood isn't rife with carbon monoxide, I can fall asleep with a few more friends than I started with...because maybe you're not a friend until you've followed me through a fire.  It doesn't matter if you come out the other side unscathed or not, but you held my hand, and you walked with me, and that means a lot.

Smithfield

Standing still is defiant of nature

and she's cruel.  Worse than

the pock-marked woman marching with

a crude sign hung around her neck.

Off-center.

She pushed a paper around my closed hand

and told me to think of the children.

I try not to.

One day they'll ask me why

and I will look to the left and

if I say nothing then I won't be a liar.

I'm already across the street when the punctuation cuts

through the wind and over the x-ing pedestrians. Or jaywalking.

When I was younger I said it phonetically.  

Z-ing.

Bastard.

Is that any way to end a conversation?

She fled from persuasion as if it was on fire.

I love when you cut to the chase, but I hate

idioms. What's wrong is wrong

when you're speaking to the right ear.  And I

need more than a pamphlet.

I grinned at the memory of z-ing.

39 years, they've been married, but I'm stumbling

through 34.

I guess that's just my vibe.

A trio of policemen share sunflower seeds,

and I think ontological certainty, a phrase

that meant nothing until a woman taught

it to me, and now I seek it in everything

but it seems to be nowhere.

There will be another train, eventually.