Features: Queries for Carrie

I want to bring my snake to grandma’s house! November 2007

Query: Mom says I can’t bring my snake and my iguana with us when we go to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving. They don’t take up too much room, and they don’t make any noises, except some rustling sometimes. I wouldn’t take them out of their cages—except if the door to the room was shut. But Mom says no. She says my grandmother would hit the roof and not come down ‘til we left. What am I supposed to do because she’s afraid of reptiles?
— Loving on Linden

Carrie: You’re supposed to remember that snake phobias are one of the most common around. You’re supposed to act like a guest at the home of an important (to you) hostess. You’re supposed to plan for the care of your not-actually-scaly friends.

Do you have a buddy who isn’t traveling for the holiday? Or a neighbor? If not, you may need to call one of those pet care services and line up some help whilst you’re over the river and through the woods. Try for a buddy first, though—those services can be pricey.

Do please keep in mind, for as long as you keep company with reptiles, that there really is a lot of unreasonable fear out there about your pets. You know there’s nothing to be afraid of. I know there’s nothing to be afraid of. But that doesn’t mean you can assume other people know it. And you can’t cure them by bringing their worst nightmare by to spend the holidays.

Query: My mom is in a panic. My boyfriend’s parents have invited us over for Thanksgiving. While we eat dinner every night, just like any family, we’ve only been in the U.S. for a few years. The invitation specified that we should bring a dish from our Thanksgiving table to share at theirs. Honestly, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving like other people do. We’re glad to be home with each other, but we don’t buy and cook a big, expensive meal. We don’t have people who travel to be with us. We just sit around and spend the day together. What do we do? Do we admit that we don’t have any Thanksgiving tradition? This is my mom’s first time to meet my boyfriend’s parents. We all want to make a good first impression.
—Anxious on Aspen

Carrie: As it turns out, your family celebrates Thanksgiving very sanely—without the fuss of too many guests, too much food, and competing traditions. Congratulations. However, the meeting of the families is a key moment in relations between you. Or it feels that way before it’s happened.
I suggest that you all decide on a dish from your tradition of origin you think represents the kind of food that means ‘celebration’ and ‘plenty’. Prepare that dish. Bring that dish along to the turkey feed on the day. Don’t worry if it’s not the kind of food that Norman Rockwell painted for the Saturday Evening Post. Thanksgiving is about rejoicing in being safe, together and more comfortable politically, economically and sometimes even spiritually here in America.
Bring a piece of your tradition with you and it will remind everyone not just of where you came from, but where they came from. Practically everyone alive in America today has ancestors who weren’t native to the New World. Celebrate your common immigration with pride. If the boyfriend’s people aren’t the sort to enjoy your non-traditional (to them) contribution to their feast, that’s the sort of thing you should know about them as soon as possible.

Query: I said something thoughtless. And my friend overheard. And it really hurt her feelings. And an apology might not be enough (though I haven’t been brave and found out yet). What, if anything can I do?
—Screwed-up on Sherman

Carrie: You could start with attempting an apology in person. It might not be enough. But it could be just the thing. If it’s really not enough, you’re in the position of those celebrities who get caught DUI, racist, or with underage persons. You’ll have to perform a rehabilitation of yourself to convince your friend of the sincerity of your apology.

To bad crawling to Jerusalem on one’s knees has fallen out of popularity as a way of paying penance for one’s wickedness and peccadilloes. It’s dramatic, painful, and takes long enough that everyone is convinced you’ve paid your emotional debts in full by the time you’ve completed the vow.

Should you let your friend know that you’re attending AA, taking anger management, getting therapy or sensitivity training, volunteering to work with the kind of people, in the kind of position or whatever, you were overheard denigrating in a manner offensive to your friend? Absolutely.

And whatever course of action you do take, it can’t be symbolic. You have to go through enough of it to do you some actual good. Even if you don’t really ‘need’ the help, the evidence of your ruined friendship may be proving the opposite.