Final touches were underway in the kitchen a year ago as giant Superman and Snoopy balloons floated past Central Park on Thanksgiving. Soon family drifted in as a skillet sizzled with bacon destined to join the Brussels. Before long, the house was abuzz with nieces, nephews, friends, children, one baby, and Danny, the wine dealer. Rita’s former boss and his wife rang the doorbell a bit before 3:00 p.m. and contributed an oversized casserole of oysters to add to the items already in the oven.

Visiting over a glass of wine, I couldn’t help but notice a black spot on my brother-in-law’s forehead. It was the size of a fruit fly, reminiscent of a scene in the movie Uncle Buck where John Candy suggests the principal have a rat gnaw the mole off her face.

Rather than take a swat at the fly, I asked, “Have you always had that black spot on your forehead?”

“No, that’s just a mole I had burned off,” he replied.

Having a forty-year history of my own with various growths cut, burned, and frozen from my face, I wondered which dermatologist he was seeing and asked him as much.

“Well, actually, a nail lady burned it off for me,” he explained. He had to be kidding. “Yeah, well, Elaine took me over to her nail lady’s house, and she said she could take care of it. She burned off eight of them.”

He rolled his head to the side to reveal a minefield of three-millimeter dots of scorched flesh.

“So, what about the pathology? How do you know it wasn’t something worrisome?” I asked.

“Oh, it wasn’t cancer. She assured me of that.” What a relief! When asked what he paid for the mutilation of his cranium, he explained the manicurist asked for seventy dollars, “…but, I gave her a hundred.”

“I hope for that much she threw in a pedicure,” I said. The idea seemed reasonable.

Just then, my cousin emerged from the bedroom with fanfare, having donned an outfit probably worn by Barnum and Bailey’s Ringmaster in 1962. The two-piece neon suit glowed red and green with images of poinsettias and an occasional random pineapple here or there. It smelled of elephant poo. He was the spitting image of Danny DeVito himself, with far less charisma. I wished I had a welder’s helmet to protect my eyes in case the single button straining to hold the suit coat together might suddenly come flying across the room like a bullet.

As the crowd of hungry folks pressed forward in the direction of the buffet, Rita asked for the Ringmaster’s help to retrieve the coveted oyster casserole from the oven. As she approached the oven, DeVito lowered its door while Rita’s mitted hands reached alongside the dish and initiated a careful retrieval. Before the casserole was clear of the door, DeVito slammed it closed, which knocked two quarts of oysters and their savory encasements to shatter on the floor. A couple of dozen deceased mollusks now swam amid shards of Pyrex in a miniature oil spill reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez disaster. A call to the EPA brought containment crews to sop up the mess and save three species of waterfowl from extinction.

If only my memory in retirement can hold on a bit longer to the reality of family drama at Thanksgiving, perhaps I will have some idea what to expect again this year.