My fiancée had told me her family thought I was "a bit quiet" because conversations were really just a rally between formal questions and tight answers. So Tuesday we were set to char brisket, we were set to host along the edges of our rustic brick patio. Shannon chose brisket because her father liked Jewish cuisine, and the neither of we could figure out any traditional food proper for barbecuing, so we decided we'd get brisket and just dress it up in tinfoil and garlic. Basically putting it on the grill for the sake of summer. The temperature low, the cook long, it was practically an oven. But for the sake of summer we let it fill the air with the aroma of sweating flesh so particular to brisket. But this is all so forgettable. What happened was Shannon told me to be more present. She told me to start conversations instead of filling in the answer key.

So we got to sitting and the idea was lovely, you know, eating outside, but the bees and the humidity and the way the wicker digs into the resulting soft skin made it all trying smiles. But the idea was lovely. When Shannon passed the horse radish (no one knew it had a use!), right after I dropped my knife, right after all sorts of sawing through backmeat, right after all that just reaching over, my thumb tensed up. Future family jumped at me with concern, really just eager to find a conversation piece. Familiar eyes looking at me in like ways told me to get to playing the proposed role. What to say? I'm always so awful at these things. I initiate conversations that people want to forget not for topic but for the effort they excerpt just being involved.

"Whatever happened to cholesterol?"

These people who might one day smother and subvert my parental vista, they just made like they were cutting brisket. The thing was they could get away with if because you really do have to hack at this stuff. But someone had to answer. Anyone?

"Did it go anywhere?," asked Marshall, Shannon's brother, and a big fan of laser eye surgery.

Should have talked that one out. But no, Instead the mood hung moonlike over our potential family unit. I looked at my future father-in-law and he just looked blankly as if we had engaged in guilty sex, as if we just couldn't push a word now that we could see all wrong. I was trying to sew a severed head in trying to carry it out. I went on about how cholesterol was such a buzz in 1992 and how no one cares about eggs. No one cared about the conversation. Shan saved me; she jumped in to talk about the new beetle. Turns out it was the family car at one point and that the one that passed in motion through the picture frames between the pickets was the first new model and of us had seen "for real". They got all into that and I couldn't participate. I was a dog. I had just shat all over the kitchen carpet and shame had my spirits dropping.

Better clear that from here, you know the kitchen is so small and if I don't start the dishes now, I won't be able to find them later. Yeah. Just a mess, you can see. But the stepparents, Earl and Katch (don't ask, you'll be sorry) were ironing out their memories and I needed space. Even more I needed to share that space with Madame you know who. So here’s this thing big in my head and I’m all frayed nerves when Shannon comes to share the space. She laughs at me! Can you believe it? Shame turned to joy as unexpectedly as the breeze came in to cool out the night.

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