文档介绍：感恩节重生记
Last Thanksgiving my girlfriend and I flew to Milwaukee1) to spend the long weekend with her parents and sister. Caitlin and I had been dating for over a year and a half, and I fortable enough around her family. But things always got tough for me around the holidays, and it didn’t help that Caitlin’s family was so close, so affectionate, always hugging and teasing2). Caitlin and I had just moved in together, and her mom—mildly religious and deeply sarcastic3)—had started referring to me as her “sin-in-law.”
I’d told myself this trip was no big deal, but as soon as we set foot in the house I started acting aloof4) and grouchy5). At the table for the big meal, I could mumble6) only a brusque7), impersonal thanks for “good food and hospitality.”
“Lame8),” Caitlin’s mom said, calling me out. “Boy, that was truly lame.”
Later, doing the dishes, I dropped a glass Caitlin handed me and started shouting at her. When everyone went out to a movie, I stayed home. I went upstairs to Caitlin’s childhood room, pulled the covers over my head and sobbed.
Thanksgiving is an emigrant’s holiday, first celebrated, legend has it, by the settlers of the Plymouth colony in gratitude to God for their first good harvest. The previous winter, they had lost nearly half their number to starvation and illness. A essful harvest, along with the peaceful participation of the Wampanoag9) Indi