dating + thanksgiving + families = oy

Well, there’s this little thing I haven’t mentioned yet.

Not so little.

Performer and Becky (his almost-ex) have not yet told their children they’re in the midst of a divorce….

* * *

Yeah, take that in!

* * *

They became parents late in life (Performer is, after all, almost 71 now), and one kid is a young teenager, and the other not yet a teenager. They feel very bad that the children’s family life is going to be disrupted, though it already is, in a way. The parents live and work in different cities: the children, who live with their mother in a neighboring state, do not yet know that their visits to their father are, in effect, part of a currently-being-arranged custody agreement.

P and Becky plan to tell them soon….probably around the beginning of December.

* * *

Hey, well, it’s not my family or my plan.

P knows that I am eager — dare I say ‘impatient’? no, I don’t dare — for the kids to know the truth, but that is quite obviously the parents’ decision and not mine.

* * *

This matter complicates Thanksgiving in an interesting way. I have long hoped that Performer would spend Thanksgiving with my family and me; we do it well, and we always have a great time. The food is delicious, and after dinner we dance or sing or tell dumb jokes or somehow dissolve into informal entertainment mode.

P likes my children and my mother and — this may be the clincher — does not want to have two Thanksgiving dinners, one with his NY cousins and his children, and another, later in the day, with me, during which he would leave his children with someone else.

* * *

So he plans to come, with his children, to our Thanksgiving dinner — but the children will not be told that I’m his girlfriend!

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As I said above, it’s not my idea, but …. I’m getting used to it.

I do love him, and he loves me, and this is not a great sacrifice or anything on my part.

But it will be odd, because it means that my mother, my two children, the four friends who will be joining us (making, with P and his kids, a total of 11 people), and I — and of course Performer himself! — will all have to ‘fake’ and not let on that P and I are boyfriend and girlfriend.

* * *

P himself pointed out to me that when he was here in a group of 22 people, my millions of cousins etc., in September, and when he was here in October for my mother’s birthday, we weren’t exactly in one another’s arms or kissing passionately. I was busy with domestic, hostessly chores, and he was talking away, as he does, in his easy social manner, with everyone.

And although I’m not delighted with the idea, I’ve come to understand the complexities of his life and see how this situation has emerged and evolved in this particular way.

Moreover, he assures me that by Christmas they’ll have been told the truth, so that when we do a kind of repeat-performance at Christmas (Jewish Christmas, meaning a tree and presents and singing but no nativity scene….that’s my family’s tradition), they will know.

* * *

I pointed out to Performer, and he said he had already had the same thought himself, that he will have to feign ignorance of my apartment, especially the kitchen, in which he is entirely at home. He will have to ask me ‘where’s the corkscrew’ or ‘where do you keep tea-bags’ or whatever, questions whose answers he knows perfectly well.

Moreover, I’ll have to de-Performerize my apartment. I’ll have to take pictures of him down in the kitchen and in my bedroom-study, and I’ll have to take tell-tale signs (his work calendar, notes from him) down from my bulletin board.

* * *

When my children were here at my mother’s birthday and at one point were upstairs using my computer, I realized that Performer’s match.com page was right over their heads in full view on my bulletin board. I haven’t yet told them how we met, but then, they haven’t asked.

Would P’s kids recognize him from his match.com page?

Probably not, but possibly. I’d better take it down.

* * *

And I guess we’ll have to invent a fake history, how we met, how we know one another, just exactly what our friendship is like. They may not ask, but we have to have the same story ready.

* * *

I’m so busy during Thanksgiving dinner that all this is not likely to bother me very much.

But you know what I think?

At the end of the evening, as soon as the door closes behind them, his very perceptive daughter is going to turn to him and say, ‘Daddy, is that your girlfriend?’

* * *

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