Thanksgiving... a holiday favored by many. Me? I hate it. I've never liked turkey as far back as I remember. Even before I was a vegetarian, I didn't like turkey. My mom went through a phase where she made lasagna at Thanksgiving, which I appreciated. But turkey? Canned cranberries? Yams, candied or otherwise? Green bean casserole? Pumpkin pie? Hated them. Hated them all! Before I knew the joys of dousing myself in alcohol at family holidays, before I knew there was such a thing as homemade cranberry sauce, before I enjoyed a good and simply prepared green bean, before I understood how football or cooking work, I hated Thanksgiving.
There was something about overindulgence for the sheer purpose of overindulging in food while millions go hungry... something about the "traditional" foods we kid ourselves into thinking we need to make... something about overhyping a meal that never sat right with me. Of course as a kid I liked the cousins, the idea of feeling thankful, the ability to eat a lot of sweets and not a lot of the same old, same old. But as an older teen and adult, I didn't care much about Thanksgiving.
Until I joined the Peace Corps. My first year as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I spent Thanksgiving in my village. It was a regular day... any other day... and how do you really celebrate? Is it the actual day or is it the actual day in America that you recognize? The second year, I spent Thanksgiving - the Thursday in Fiji, Wednesday in America - with fellow Volunteers (and a Canadian) in town. We had a vegan celebration full of home-cooked food, largely cooked in a toaster oven, and sat around a cloth eating locally grown food we prepared ourselves, giving thanks for what we had survived (seriously, not an easy feat). My memories include laughter, fellowship, connection, comfort.
The next year, I was back in Wisconsin, celebrating Thanksgiving at a buffet at a restaurant. Granted, it was with my family. But... very different.
The following year, Thanksgiving became a holiday to celebrate. By then, I was in Vermont. Again, thousands of miles from "home", Thanksgiving was something to celebrate. There was laughter, fellowship, connection, comfort. We celebrated the next three Thanksgivings with friends who took me in to their family. I moved to Vermont to start a life with a boyfriend I thought was my end-all-be-all. His teachers-come-friends were mentors to me - the kind of "adults" I wanted to be, who raised their kids in the city with a quarter acre of garden, chickens, nature, imagination, public radio. The kind of parents who still knew how to have a good time and balance responsibilities of adulthood. The kind of parents who concert, vacation, and raise their kids to be conscientious participants of a world gone mad.
Celebrating Thanksgiving, or Sundays, or birthdays, or any day, really, with them was always an event. She plans the menu two months in advance. He acquiesces to spare a fight. We divvied up ingredients lists. We prepared kosher Thanksgivings full of seasonal foods and recipes that received the modern, artisanal, homemade treatment. So long, canned cranberries! Goodbye, canned green bean casserole! Sayonara, bland mashed potatoes! Hello everything seasonal, everything homemade. The old recipes with a new spin. The discovery that I liked sweet potatoes!
I had fun - hours of cooking, turkey prepared multiple ways, everyone contributing. Her parents and his parents were always there. The Dude and I there. Sometimes a brother and sister-in-law and a child I knew would be raised in the hippest of households. Occasionally the potential for a friend of an in-law's cousin's cousin to show up. Movies, football, course after course of delicious food, going round the table and saying "thank you" for something. Usually my thanks involved this family and their hospitality: a second family while so far from my own. Three boys is certainly different from the gaggle of girls I was raised among but kids are kids and youth is youth. And being thankful for our company and lot in life was enriched.
This year, there's none of that. I've been trying to avoid thinking of Thanksgiving completely. No advance plans. No parade. No knitting. No menus. No kiddos and board games. No root veggies. No Hunger Games movie. I shove aside the panic of not seeing Mockingjay Part 2 with the three people I've seen the first three movies with. I try in vain to ignore that I'll be alone this year. Instead, I push down the fear that I'm being replaced by the new me. My imagination says the Dude's new gal pal will take my place, giggling and happy and extroverted where I was shy, nervous, and too eager to pull my weight. I breathe out my sadness of not playing with the youngest boy, of not challenging the oldest to my limited football knowledge.
This year, Brett Favre is being honored. Outside of my family, this Vermont family is the only one I think will appreciate that moment. How do I find a bar? Do I make myself a special feast and scour internet pirate sites to find FOX? Do I get the dog a turkey bone and celebrate with her? Do I invite myself somewhere else, into someone else's family? Do I sit alone in the sadness that I've created for myself? How do I force myself out into the world to be adventurous, social, busy? Secretly, I have movies to watch (I'll even pay to rent Trainwreck), chores to do (paint the upstairs hallway? Hells yeah, drink in hand and music blaring), days of journaling to catch up on (and poems aplenty ready to make the page!) and the lazy motivation to tackle a hike with YannaDog (Belvidere Mountain at last!).
In reality, I know it'll be a combination of the above, mixed with the sad and guilt-inducing Skype call with my parents. Maybe I'll turn back a generous offer that I'll feel I've guilted the offerer into; relegate free Netflix flicks to the queue; and indulge Ben and Jerry's as my special meal.
Last week, I wished upon a falling star. As you can imagine, I made wishes. As you can imagine, wishes aren't happening and I'm still feeling stuck. I'm waiting for this year to be a distant memory. I'd like to think that I can give thanks this year for something. My health? The fortune that I'm not a Syrian refugee? The mounds of stuff accumulated in my house over four years? The health of my family? That I'm alive? What does one give thanks for when one's life feels perforated, spiraling out of control into an unrecognizable oblivion? That I can write a blog post where I reminisce about times when I've had too much food and fortune to appreciate?
But that is unfair for anyone to do. Those who can should be thankful every day for the fortunes we have. I was born white, middle-class, Christian, in a white, middle-class, Christian suburb in central Wisconsin. It's an enviable position for many.
This year... I'm thankful to be alive and in good health. I'm thankful my family is in good health and cares so deeply for me. I'm thankful I have a house that I own that provides me shelter. I'm thankful I've developed a support system (largely named Jessie and Jackie and Lost Nation Brewery) in Vermont. I'm thankful I have friends who stick by me all over the mid- and far west, despite everything all these years. I'm thankful my body doesn't rebel on me. I'm thankful I have a counselor whose healing has calmed my emotional tsunamis. I'm thankful I have the ability to choose so many options for my life...
Yet I'm sad and lonely and scared and confused and wishing I was seeing Mockingjay Part 2 and getting tipsy off wine and taking secret trips to the basement and sharing clandestine moments with a bearded weirdo whilst roasting root vegetables and eating homemade pies and watching football with an 11-year old whose knowledge far surpasses mine and building towers with the cutest four year old boss I'll ever have the pleasure of knowing. I'm missing the purpose of Thanksgiving. I'm giving thanks without a turkey this year and without a turkey substitute. Giving thanks without giving thanks, really. I'm glad I won't have to go to work. But I really, really want structure to keep my brain from flailing. This year has taught me about patience and even though I wanteverythingrightnowgimmegimmegimmeeverythingI'mowedamanababyajobIloveundyingfriendshipsNOWNOWNOW..........
I get it. Thanks means realizing time is all that matters. I can give thanks for seeing through the forest, into the other side, and knowing this is all temporary. It will pass and I will be be on the other side and someday this will be a nasty dream and my head will rise from the ashes and one of these days, I will celebrate Thanksgiving however I want to, on my own terms, and I can have that family on that corner lot and I can love it all and I will be thankful. I'm just taking my own circuitous route to get there. Turkey not included.
