I’m going to save most of my navel-gazing reflection on 2005 for the end of the year, because there’s still some 2005 left, but I’m feeling pretty reflective on this Thanksgiving eve. Maybe it’s the little cat’s-eye reflectors that I have attached to my edges. (Ouch, sorry, couldn’t resist that particularly atrocious pun.)
Nah, it’s just that Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, partly because it comes at a time of year that I love, partly because it’s a no-gifts holiday (I love getting gifts, but I don’t like the stress of trying to continually top the previous year’s gifts, plus I always feel a little guilty at all the bounty I receive on birthdays and at Christmas/Chanuka—though I absolutely love getting presents, always have and always will—as St. Teresa of Avila said, “Anyone who gave me so much as a sardine could have the world from me”), and partly because it was traditionally my favorite family gathering. My mom and her sister used to trade off Thanksgiving-hosting duties, but by the time I was entering my teens, things had settled into a pattern of my mom making Thanksgiving and my aunt making Passover. (That’s how we refer to it in my family: “making” the holiday, i.e. having people at your house and doing the cooking.) My mom was a wonderful cook, and I don’t mean that in the sense that everyone’s mom is automatically their favorite cook; my mom just had a flair for making relatively uncomplicated food that tasted great and always turned out right. (She had some not-so-successful experimental phases in the ’60s, it’s true, when my parents did a lot of entertaining, but those were aberrations; her tried-and-true recipes were all splendid.) And my aunt and uncle and their family—two boys and a girl, just like my family, except with the age order reversed (I’m the youngest, my cousin Debbie is the oldest), and all matched neatly to us in age—were the relatives I was closest to growing up, for various reasons. So Thanksgiving at our apartment was festive and loud and full of good conversation, excellent wine (my uncle is a collector), and enormous quantities of superb food.
I can’t remember the last time I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving, even though in the past five or so vacation-deprived years, going home has meant flying in on Thanksgiving day and flying out on Sunday, which is always exhausting. It will be weird not to be there, and I’m sure I’ll miss it, but then again, since my mom died (in 2002), Thanksgiving has been a little bittersweet anyway, because I’ve felt her absence especially keenly at this time of year. I feel my mom’s absence every single day, of course, and I expect I always will, but all of my Thanksgiving memories are wrapped up with thoughts of her, and although the past few Thanksgivings (one at my aunt and uncle’s house, two at my brother and sister-in-law’s) have been wonderful, happy, warm occasions filled with the same good food and good company as the ones I grew up with, they’ve been just a little less meaningful without my mom. But it will still be weird not to be there.
But maybe it will be the start of a new tradition, one of my own making. This year I’m going home around Christmastime instead, and tomorrow I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner (of a sort—no turkey, since I don’t eat meat and I can’t really cook a whole turkey just for Bill) for the two of us, which I’m looking forward to. Bill and I have different eating habits and schedules, so we don’t often sit down to a home-cooked meal together, and I’m looking forward to that, as well as to the actual cooking. I’m a decent cook myself, having learned well from my mom, and though I know how to make all the standard Thanksgiving side dishes, I’ve never actually done it. I’m expecting it to be fun, especially since we just got a nice new stove that is vastly superior to the one it replaced merely by virtue of the fact that it actually works.
And I’m feeling particularly grateful this year, feeling like I have a tremendous amount to be grateful for. It’s been a fairly eventful year, in mostly good ways, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to leave a horrible, soul-sucking job situation for one that I enjoy and am challenged by and am learning from and just generally getting a kick out of. I feel hugely grateful that I have as many wonderful friends as I do, including some new ones (like my St. Louis pal Chris, one of the finest people I’ve met in ages, and my wonderful co-workers, to mention just a few) and some not-so-new, very much loved ones and some with whom I’ve gotten back in touch. I’m grateful that my little foray into my past (which has mostly receded back into the past again now, and maybe that’s as it should be) has been almost entirely positive—one part maybe wasn’t such a good idea, on balance, but even that was far from a disaster, and the rest was a delight. I’m grateful that I got to see my treasured and stalwart friend Tim last weekend, for the first time in five years. I’m grateful for the Twanggang and for the privilege of getting to work with them on Twangfest. I’m grateful that my immediate family is healthy and thriving and that my two beautiful nephews are turning into such terrific young men. I’m grateful not to be in the grip of the profound depression that was just beginning to take me over at this time last year. I’m grateful that there are so many things, from music to knitting and beyond, that give me pleasure every day.
Hell, I’m just all around grateful to be here on the planet, healthy, in good spirits, married to a great guy, surrounded by my precious cats without whom my life would be so much less, warm and safe and with more than enough to eat and a roof over my head. I hope all who are reading this have much to be grateful for too…oh, yeah, and if you’re reading this, odds are you’re one of the people I’m grateful for too. So thanks. And happy Thanksgiving.