A Provincetown Gathering of Friends
This Sunday is a really big day for our Provincetown family. Seventeen of us will gather at Ray’s and my home at 5 p.m. for our traditional Thanksgiving dinner prior to us heading south. Everyone looks forward to it with great excitement. Some of us have been cooking for days.
Each person or couple brings a food dish that is part of their important memories of Thanksgiving or other holidays. I’ll be cooking a couple of turkeys and my very famous dressing and gravy. Ray will bake three incredible pumpkin-pecan pies. Tom and David are bringing their yummy mashed potatoes. Chip and Jean have prepared a delicious and unique cranberry sauce, as well as creamed onions. Gregg and Scott are going to surprise us with a terrific green vegetable. Manny, who grew up in Portugal, and John, who grew up in Ireland, are bringing a pea and Portuguese sausage dish that Manny’s mother made each Christmas and which sounds wonderful. Michael, who grew up in an enormous Boston Irish family, is preparing turnip. Sharon and Patsy are making Simis, a great combination of sweet potato, carrot, and prune that Sharon had on holidays in her Jewish home. Harriet and Ann are bringing wine, and Kath and Kim will come bearing dark chocolates.
When they arrive, everyone will gather around the big screen television upstairs in the family room for a sensational half-hour DVD collection by Ray of photos of the year set to the music of the We Five, a group from the ‘70s that all of us are old enough to fondly remember. The program begins with shots of us at last year’s gathering and takes us through the Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s holidays, everyone’s birthdays (including Ann‘s big bash for her 65th attended by two U.S. Congressmen, the Mayor of Boston, and one or two state representatives), spreading at low tide Ray’s beloved-brother Bob’s ashes with his sons on the Fourth of July, water skiing and tubing with the grandchildren, friends, and assorted kids from the beach, games of Hearts and of Mexican Train, an elaborate picnic meal at the Boston Pops concert in Hyannis, the big bonfire on the beach with hot dogs and s’mores, the tall ships, pirate ship, and Rosie’s cruise ship in the harbor, lunch in Chip’s dune shack, bocce on the back lawn, me dressed as Zorro and Kath, Kim, Ann, and Patsy dressed as cowgirls for Carnival, our beautiful flower garden, heron and squirrel shots, visits from friends and family, the publishing of my new book, an x-ray of Ray’s disc surgery, the fall of Lehman Brothers, the death of PT, the beloved three-legged dog of Chip and Jean, sunsets and full moons over Captain Jack’s Wharf in Provincetown Harbor, the “Brian and Ray” gently bobbing on the waves, and finally back to a photo of Ray standing proudly next to his pumpkin-pecan pies. There will then be long and loud applause for Ray and the repeated statement of “I want a copy of that.”
The photos of the past year will remind us all of how fortunate we are to belong to such a loving group of friends, to live in such a safe and beautiful place, and to have had so much fun together in such a short period of time. We’ll then gather around the elaborately-decorated table in folding chairs borrowed from the West End Racing Club. We’ll hold hands, spend a moment looking from person to person, and then I’ll make comments on the significance of this particular Thanksgiving celebration. (It doesn’t escape me that while we seven gay and lesbian couples, and one straight couple, all of whom have been together an average of 25 years, are holding hands around the table, the voters in California, Florida, and Arizona are preparing to vote on whether our loving unions should be granted the status of marriage in the eyes of the state.)
Following my words of inspiration, organized chaos ensues as the helpers (there’s one in every couple, two in some) jump up to dish up and serve the plates. Oohs and aahs will fill the room for the next five minutes as we each compliment the chefs on their unique contributions to the meal. We’ll then end up in multiple conversations about the upcoming election and the status of the marriage vote in California, the cost of real estate, town problems (Sharon is the Town Manager), local gossip, holiday plans, the health of friends and family members (Tom’s mom has breast cancer), Ray’s recovery from shoulder surgery, the sadness that the “Brian and Ray” is in dry dock for the winter, good and bad new television programs and movies, and how those of us who are heading south soon will miss those of us who are spending the winter in Provincetown and vice versa. All of this, of course, will be photographed by Ray for next year’s pre-dinner program.
Ray’s delicious pies, with or without ice cream, but all with whipped cream, and dark chocolates will be enjoyed with more chatter and, as time allows, possibly a game of Mexican Train, a game of dominoes that has filed many of our nights together in groups of four, six, eight, and larger.
Sometimes I feel as if I could weep because there is so much joy and beauty in my life. That does not mean there isn’t any pain or loss. We’ve had a great deal of both this year. But we create our own suffering and we create our own happiness, and we can either sit around and be miserable about the effect of Lehman’s demise on our life, and other challenges, or we can play. We prefer to do the latter, and for the opportunity and the wisdom to do just that, I give thanks.
