As a new Open-Salon-blogger, I wanted to get in on my first "open call", the Thanksgiving Memory version.

I wanted to spill the beans on my holidays past--the food, the fights, the frantic way a family of 6 grew into an extended group of 20 plus, all who love to hate, or is it hate to love? each other at Thanksgiving time.

I wanted to tell you about the days of yore, when this argyle-socked, pony-tailed girl in the "made for you with love by grandma" sweater, hid in the bathroom on Turkey day at my aunt and uncle's home, while people came in to do their business.  I couldn't see them, I was in a cabinet, but I knew what was going on, and  hidden deep behind the toilet paper and cleaning products, I was holding my breath and giggling with delight at  my trick.

Years later, always at Thanksgiving time, as I sit down on a toilet and stare straight at the sink with the little table in front of me, a captive on the pot with just a trace of worry that some little kid is crouched inside there, I ask myself --why did I do that?   Was I a perverse voyeur?  Was I itching for ejection from the round table turkey dinner?  But the answer is always the same boring one:  because I could.  I was small, the cabinet was big, and it was there.  That's not very dramatic.  That's just childish. 

And I want there to be anxst, and resolution, and crescendo in my story; all that good writing stuff for your eyes to gnaw on as you ready for your holiday turkey meal. 

But I can't divulge yet, because my people are still alive, my story is still being written: and if I pre-write about, for example, the time one sibling threatened to boycott Thanksgiving because Sibling One was  mad at Sibling Two for crimes committed but not limited to a family wedding the previous summer, which led to a promise  all Six of Us would go to therapy, which we did, then sat around and realized things about our upbringing that we didn't like, and got three session into how-much-we've-been-scarred before our collective money and patience ran out.  If, say, I write about that in all its detail,  then those people I have not named won't ever speak to me again.  

And I'm not ready for Thanksgiving Day turkey alone.

So for now enjoy your traditions around the country, your sweet potatoes and your wine, your stuffing and your squash and I will do the same.  And some day the stories will tumble out from me like pilgrims off the Mayflower:  dazed and confused, rumpled but ready.

And since I am new here let me wish any of you who read this a very Happy Thanksgiving.

And one more thing: when you use the toilet in your home or anybody elses this holiday time,  check the vanity cabinet.   Just to be on the safe side.