AUTHOR: M. DATE: 7:22:00 PM ----- BODY:

Tomorrow I catch a plane at o'dark thirty on my way to South Carolina. It's the first time in a dog's age my parents haven't hosted Thanksgiving, and it might just be chaos (let's hope for the good kind of chaos). Once upon a time the whole family was in Georgia. About 8 years ago one of my cousins and his wife moved to South Carolina, and have had two kids. I bolted for anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line as soon as I had a diploma in hand. My South Carolina cousins were eventually followed by another cousin and her husband and their two kids. A few months back my aunt and uncle retired and followed them, shifting the critical mass out of Georgia for the first time since 1980, and, with my grandmother gone, leaving only my parents and one cousin and her family. So: this year, the beach. I. is staying here, a decision we're now kicking ourselves over... okay, that's a lie: I'm kicking myself, but she's pulling out her hair about her own family holiday drama. The decision made sense at the time but now I've decided that it was incredibly stupid and I don't want to do this any more without my wife. As it is, I sometimes feel like enough of a kid - for a long time because I was the youngest, and now, because my three cousins have had 6 babies in the last 5 years, because I'm the only one without a kid, and am usually without a partner at these occasions because a certain someone, while very gracious about taking the train for many, many hours to spend time with her in-laws, doesn't fly. And, oh yeah, I hate being away from her. I'm staying with my cousins this time around, along with two cousins, their spouses, an infant, a 2-year-old, and two 3-year-olds. And speaking of bedlam, the picture is of last year's version. Stay tuned for the updated photo, with a new kid this year - and fingers crossed for a OUR new one by this time next year.

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