As we sit around the Thanksgiving table – my husband, two feral children, and I – we give thanks that, despite its best efforts, 2020 has failed to kill us. Rather, it taught us how to survive by transforming us into savage beasts, so let’s remember our many blessings as we rip our lifeless turkey to shreds.
For one, I am thankful that I live far away in the forgotten land of Alaska, where no one really cares if we are still counting ballots days after the presidential election. As the rest of the world fights over toilet paper, we’ve got ice boxes full of it next to the carcasses of dismembered rabbits.
When everyone worried about a possible pandemic food shortage, we learned how to grow vegetables in a cold rainforest. We figured out how to hunt and take down a kill – first with a 300 Winchester, then with our bare fangs.
Outside a plague wreaks havoc, but inside I don’t have to wear a bra, shave my muzzle, or hide my compulsion to eat twenty pounds of meat in one sitting. Thanks to hygge, the Danish art of coziness, I can watch the country devolve into civil war with hot cocoa, candlelight, and alpaca sweaters.
And because I just read about kalsarikännit, the Finnish art of drinking at home alone in your underwear, the revolution will be waged with Facebook memes.
My ability to control absolutely nothing has nurtured a newfound sensitivity to tidal fluctuations and cosmic phenomena. Months of hermitage off the grid has synced my menstrual cycle to the moon, and now I am connected to my primordial roots. I just never realized that my ancestors were part canine.
The devolution of our civilized family into wild animals started gradually. First, my children chewed the erasers off the pencils. Then they gnawed the legs off the dining room chairs. But I am grateful for their ingenuity in developing a new language. Who needs words when growling, gnashing, and interpretive dance will do?
In the process, I also discovered my voice. Yes, sometimes I sound like a werewolf demanding human sacrifice and salty snacks, but at least I have learned to speak my truth (mostly during the full moon).
I’ll admit that trying to homeschool my wolf pups has been hard. Since I am no longer bound to linear time, I considered hibernating until 2021. There were times I thought I might lose an organ. For that reason, I’d like to thank my gallbladder, which was created as tribute for just this purpose. Also, thank you to my kidneys for making me an extra one, just in case.
This Thanksgiving I am grateful for little things, like the mute button on Zoom, which hides the sounds emanating from my hindquarters as I assume Downward-Facing Dog. Likewise, that Georgia’s vote recount certifying a Biden win can still make me reach orgasm.
Yes, 2020 turned us into furry beasts, and it was really sad when my daughter accidentally ate the family cat. Although it might have been easier just to drown in grief, we all saw what happened to Atreyu’s horse in The Never Ending Story when he let that happen. So we carry on with the hopes that, like Atreyu, we will also reach the Ivory Tower, and that it will also be shaped like a vagina, which will remind us that the future is still female. Or, in our case, alpha female canis lupus.
As we suck the last of the marrow from the turkey remains, we give thanks that what didn’t kill us only made us furry. And if you hear howling at 8:00 tonight, you will know that’s just our little wolf pack celebrating.
