Thanksgiving

My sister, Julie, and I have never exactly been the best of friends. We don't fight much, but we've been extremely competitive for as long as either of us can remember. Julie was born just seventeen months before me, which meant that neither of us really got to have that period where we were our parents' favorites. That was, at least, the therapist that I went to for a few months in high school's opinion. I thought he was full of shit, personally. I think Julie and I are just two competitive people whose interests don't usually mesh. In high school, she was the popular athlete, juggling cross-country in the fall, track and field in the spring, and various positions on the student council. I was the nerd who didn't do much on the weekends besides study and practice the piano. This, of course, was the source of my parents' anxiety about me and my "emotional development." "Wouldn't you rather be out with your friends than studying?" they would ask. They didn't complain much when I consistently brought home report cards with straight A's, though. The fact of the matter was that being known as "Julie's sister" had gotten old in elementary school, and so I had found separate interests and worked as hard as I could to excel in them in order to show her up. However, the one thing that therapist said to me that made sense was that there was a part of me, one that I never acknowledged but that still existed, that really wanted Julie to be proud of me.

After high school, Julie went to USC to study journalism, and, of course, run for their cross-country and track teams. I graduated a year after she did and went to Cal with full financial aid, mostly made up of scholarships, to study microbiology. As far as pleasing our parents went, that gave me a leg up - USC was a lot closer to our home in Fountain Valley than Berkeley, but they were paying through the nose for Julie's education and not paying anything for mine.

At college, we both followed the patterns we had established in high school. She had a very active social life and was majoring in something that would eventually lead to a career that kept her in constant contact with people. I had a few close friends but really didn't have much of a social life to speak of, and was heading for a career in research. When I came home the first time for Thanksgiving break, people kept asking me, "aren't you lonely?" My answer was always no. I did miss my sister, but that wasn't something I would ever admit to.

That particular Thanksgiving break didn't begin much differently from those I experienced in high school. I flew down Tuesday night, as soon as classes were finished, armed with all my books and intent on getting some good studying done in the next few days. Julie waited until Wednesday night to drive down because she didn't want to miss any more social activities than she had to. I woke up early Thursday morning to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from start to finish, live. Julie stumbled out of bed at 11, which was fairly early for her.

"Aren't you a little old for this parade, Helen?" she asked as she walked into the family room.

"The number of people in this country that tune in to this parade is high enough that I doubt it's just children watching it," I retorted. "Besides, what's wrong with wanting to feel nostalgic?"

Julie rolled her eyes and headed for the kitchen. "Just remember that the game's on at one." Oh joy, I thought, football. I enjoyed some sports, but football just struck me as boring and unnecessarily complex. It was a love both my sister and my father shared, though, which gave them a bond that I was slightly envious of. I wasn't envious enough to get interested in the sport, though.

It wasn't long before the television showed Santa Claus driving up, which was the end of the parade. Julie and my dad came in with mugs of coffee, parked themselves on the couch, and turned on the football game. I went to the kitchen to help my mother prepare dinner. Like most families, for us, the holiday centered on the veritable feast my mother would serve at four in the afternoon. My mom had gone through a period before she married my dad where she thought she might want to be a chef rather than a real estate agent, and so had gone through a bunch of gourmet cooking classes and still bought the occasional copy of the magazine Bon Appetit. I usually helped her on the major holidays. I rather enjoyed it, and it gave me a bond with my mother that Julie couldn't be a part of because she hated cooking. I wondered if she was ever envious of that bond. If she was, she certainly didn't let on.

The football game went by pretty quickly, compared to some Thanksgivings I can remember where the last few minutes were still being played out as we were putting food out on the table. It was over at three, about the same time Julie received a phone call.

"Hello?" I overheard. "Oh, hi, Tom. Football? Yeah, that sounds like fun. Well, there's the park down the street here. Yeah. I'll have to eat in an hour, though. Okay. Okay. See you in a few. Bye." She poked her head into the kitchen. "Hey Mom, I'm gonna go down the street and play football with some friends, okay?"

"Okay, sweetie," my mother answered as she checked on the turkey. "Just be sure you're back by four."

"Will do!" Julie answered, grabbing her sweatshirt off the couch and rushing out the front door. I shrugged and kept working on the crust for the pumpkin pie. She was back just ten minutes later.

"Hey Hel!" she called as she ran in the door. I grimaced. I hate it when she calls me that. There's something about a nickname that doubles as the name of a realm of eternal punishment that just doesn't appeal to me. Still, I looked up from what I was doing to see what she had to say.

"Jeff just twisted his ankle, so we're short one person. You wanna come play? You wouldn't have to do anything besides block, it'll be easy."

My mother looked up from her green bean casserole and smiled. "You go ahead, honey. I can manage it in here," she said before I had even gotten a chance to react.

Julie came into the kitchen, grabbed my arm, and started to pull me towards the door. "Come on," she said, "we don't have much time."

I sighed. I was trapped. The decision had already been made for me. "Okay, let me go get a sweatshirt." Julie nodded impatiently, and I ran upstairs to my room. On impulse, I grabbed the USC sweatshirt Julie had gotten me the year before out of my drawer and put it on. I went back downstairs and then Julie and I jogged down the street to the park. A bunch of her friends were standing around, tossing the football back and forth. They separated into what I assumed were their teams as we ran up.

"Okay, we're all set," Julie called. "You're on my team," she said to me, then gathered us into a huddle. She explained what the next play should be, which went completely over my head, then turned to me. "Just make sure no one from the other team can get to the guy with the ball," she said. "Pick one person to block and stay on them. In an absolute emergency, if you're open, someone might throw the ball to you. If they do, catch it and run that way as well as you can. Got it?"

I nodded, not knowing what to make of the whole situation. It didn't sound too hard, though, so I was willing to give it a shot. The game went on. I followed what was going on, but not without some difficulty. In the next half-hour, the other team managed to get the ball from us and score a touchdown, which got the ball back to our team. Julie ended up playing quarterback, and her friend Trevor planned out the next play. She was supposed to pass the ball to Trevor, that much I understood. Beyond that, I was a little confused, a feeling I really wasn't used to.

The play started. The guy in front of Julie tossed the ball through his legs to her, and she backed up and got ready to pass the ball. Trevor was being blocked rather well by a really tall guy on the other team. Julie looked around, but no one else was open. Then I realized with some horror that that was incorrect, that I was actually open. Julie looked at me, I looked at her, and then all of a sudden the ball was flying at me. No thoughts of possible glory went through my head; I just wanted to catch the ball. The pass was a little high, so I reached up to try to catch it the way I had seen everyone else do. I'd like to say that I caught it, ran down the field, and scored the winning touchdown, earning myself instant respect from my sister and her friends. I'd be lying. The ball pegged me in the arm and bounced to the ground. I lost my balance and fell down with it. Someone on my team groaned. I stayed on the ground for a bit, with my left arm, the one that had just gotten hit, pressed against my stomach, and my right hand over my face. It took me a second to realize that there was someone walking towards me. It was my sister. Oh great, I thought. Now she's going to chew me out. I looked up. Julie stood there and looked back for a second, then gave me a little smile and held out her hand. I took it, and she helped me up. "Could've happened to anyone," she said, patting me on the back. "At least you tried." She turned away then and missed seeing the huge smile on my face.

The game continued for about fifteen more minutes. The other team got a hold of the ball soon after I failed to catch it, but we got it back pretty quickly, and Trevor managed to score a touchdown, putting us in the lead. The other team complained about having to end the game there, but they had agreed on stopping at four, so there wasn't much they could do about it. Julie said goodbye to her friends and we headed back home. We didn't say much on the way.

"Go wash your hands and then come eat!" my mother called as soon as we walked in the door. Julie and I complied, and I was reminded of the times we used to play outside together when we were very young, before she was the popular one and I was the studious one. I flicked water at her as we were washing our hands and I could tell she was thinking the same thing. She splashed me back, then dried her hands on my back.

"Nice sweatshirt, kid," she said, grinning, then ran to the dining room before I could retaliate. My dad raised an eyebrow as we both sat down at the table with childish grins on our faces.

"How was the game?" he asked.

"It was great," Julie answered. "We won." I unconsciously held my breath, wondering if she was going to tell him about my screw-up. She didn't say anything more, though.

He turned to me. "How did you like the game, Helen?"

"It was fun," I answered. "It's harder than it seems." He seemed satisfied with that answer. Julie caught my eye and we smiled at each other again. For the first time in years, I felt like I had a friend in my sister. It was the happiest Thanksgiving I could remember.