The Feast

My favorite thing ALL YEAR is to wear my pjs and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with my children. It is something I look forward to for an entire year. Something that means a lot to me, maybe because I grew up in NY and remember watching it with MY parents and grandparents.

Demon Baby was having NONE of it. He screamed and whined through the entire parade until I was ready to make a pitcher of Bloody Marys.

While I cooked (well, my mom did most of it, but I cleaned and set the table), he continued to whine and scream and otherwise wear on everyone's nerves.

Then Demon Baby attended the Thanksgiving feast naked. After persuading him into sweatpants (but no underwear and no shirt), he refused to eat and pretty much disrupted the entire family meal until I was ready to pour HIM a gimlet if he would just settle down and be quiet.

He wanted his pie first.

And then he wanted whipped cream. But sucked off the can and not ON his pie.

He wanted gingerale--mixed with Diet Coke because it makes the ices cubes look sort of amber-orange.

He didn't want to say grace.

I think he's giving my parents (living with me until sometime in January) an ulcer. Seventy-five-year-old men should not be subjected to demons. It's harmful to their health.

And so when it came time for me to say what I was grateful for before dinner, I was hard-pressed to come up with something beyond a mumbled "health and children."

And then . . . this morning, Demon Baby climbed into my bed. Naked, he curled up against me and hugged my arm and told me I was wonderful. He gazed up and me and said, "Touch your arm here."

"Where?"

"Right here," he pointed to my upper arm where he usually rests his head when he's curled up with me.

"Why?"

"Because it is the softest spot in the whole world."

And suddenly I knew why I was grateful beyond measure.