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Family Dinner

Susan Anmuth

No way could it be worse.
So at first I thought.
But then I remembered –
It could.

We might have argued politics.
Petty politics, the pettier,
The more impassioned.
Instead they talked about fraud –

Check fraud, mailbox-stealing fraud, special pens so your signature
Soaks into checks to prevent fraud.
Other countries making all their currencies different sizes.
I had a story but couldn’t rouse from my coma to deliver.

Does anyone else have so boring a family?
We gathered to welcome my cousin Robin and her husband Roy
Visiting from California.
Aunt Dot whose house this was

Obsessed about the pot roast not being hot enough.
No one else cared.
The problems with the post roast were its blandness
And extraordinary chewiness.

Asparagus were long but unmemorable
Baby potatoes delicious
But far too few.
Dessert, a plate of chocolate rugalach
With a small log of cut up white halva.
And the platter of varied Portuguese pastries
I’d relished choosing.
Aunt Dot told me she only agreed

To my offer because she knew
How much it mattered to me. She said that twice.
She has no inkling how ungracious she is.
Interesting, as she’s a clinical social worker.

The heartbreak was Kiskaya in the kitchen.
Kiskaya cleans for Dot every two weeks
And used to clean for my mother
Before she died twelve years ago.

Dot goes on and on about how Kiskaya is family.
Why then was she standing in the kitchen
In direct view of my dining room chair
Instead of at the table with the rest of the family?

I drove 200 plus miles round trip
To see my cousin Robin.
Have I mentioned I hate driving?
Also my coolant was acting up.

When we were children I adored Robin,
Loved and bossed her around,
Taking full advantage of my eighteen months
elderliness.

In the sixties she stopped talking to me
Because I had criticized her bringing coffee to her boss.
My goal last Sunday was to get her to forgive me
And be friends once more.

She hugged me when I left,
Which Robin, stubborn as myself,
One of our cousin-bonds, would only do
If she liked me again.

So I’m glad I went to the family dinner
Awful as it was.
Because yes
It could well have been worse.

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