more to be thankful for.
Did you have a good Thanksgiving?
That’s great. I’m so glad. I did too.
My friend Anna – who just hosted me in Bend – came over to visit. Her boyfriend was off racing at the West Yellowstone Ski Festival, a place that I really came to miss over the last few days, and as a recent transplant to the west coast she didn’t have many options for the holiday. Come to Eugene, I said! And she did.
It was very cute because when I go to Bend, I get really excited by all the snow. When Anna arrived here in Eugene, she was simply astounded by the amount of green stuff. Growing. As a fellow New Englander, I can understand, but I’m mostly numb to it at this point. Still, every once in a while I think, wow, this is crazy. Look at all of these plants growing in November. The green stuff really made Anna happy.
We set to work making an apple pie and then took it up to my friend Matt’s house. He had invited me up for an orphan Thanksgiving of sorts, but when we arrived the last things we felt like were orphans. Ten or so of Matt’s friends from as far away as California and Alaska had converged on his house and spent the day making delicious food. As soon as I sat down I was offered my first real hot toddy. It was good, and everyone was so friendly. We had a great time sitting around in front of the fire until it was time to eat. Eventually a few more Eugene natives showed up with side dishes in hand. Matt and his grad school buddies carved up the 24-pound turkey. It was time to eat.
Now: imagine a Thanksgiving potluck with seventeen people. I think there may have been seventeen things to eat. There was turkey, of course, and gravy, and cranberry sauce and cranberry relish, and three kinds of stuffing and two kinds of mashed potatoes. But then there were brussels sprouts, kale, corn bread pudding, roasted carrots, salad, sweet potatoes, a Mexican mole casserole, spicy tofu, delicious bread, and a squash, apple, and onion gratin I had brought. I’m probably forgetting something. But trust me, filling up a plate without overfilling it was pretty impossible. I wanted to try everything and it all ended up in a big foodpile.
When we were all sitting down at the table with our monstrous plates, Matt did a brief reading from Barabara Kingsolver about Thanksgiving and then we began eating. As we picked away at our hoards of food, each person in the circle gave a toast. Luckily somebody had invested heavily in champagne and there was actually enough for seventeen people to drink to seventeen toasts. That’s a lot of champagne. I don’t think I’ve ever had that much champagne before. It was delicious.
But that implies that we were all just getting plastered. Which, I mean, I’ll admit, by the time Kurt, the last one at the table, gave his toast, things were kind of sloppy. There were a few instances of uncontrollable giggling around the table.
Despite all the booze, though, the toasts were amazing and they really made me think about all the things that I am thankful for. Kevin, who sat on one side of me, was thankful for his health and having the ability to move around and do the things that he loves to do. People were thankful for friends and family. They were thankful to be finished with graduate school. They were thankful for love. They were thankful that they were vulnerable enough to be loved.
What was I thankful for? I didn’t speak as eloquently as I wish I could have, but I got a bit of stage fright. I said that I was thankful for change, for being able to move across the country and start something new and be happy.
But what I really meant was not only that I was thankful for the ability to change, to adapt, to make yourself into something a little bit new. I’m also thankful for being able to see the big picture, and be able to recognize the negative aspects of a situation instead of being so hemmed in by being grateful for the positives. It doesn’t matter how many positives there are if you aren’t happy, and you’re not obligated to ignore your own feelings based on the pros and cons that everyone else sees. I’m thankful for being able to pick up and move on, constantly in search of something that is more completely satisfying. One day we’ll all find it, that thing.
For me, I’m not sure that Eugene is that thing, but it certainly has lots of pluses. I thought of all of them as I sat around Matt’s giant table with an ever-refilling glass of champagne and surrounded by a group of incredibly kind, creative, thoughtful people, many of whom I hadn’t met before but already felt like old friends.
For dessert, we had four kinds of pie and a giant amount of whipped cream. We had for some reason started with two quarts of heavy cream. Matt doesn’t own an electric mixer or even a hand-cranked one, so we took turns whipping it for a whisk. It was sad to see the giant bowl of whipped cream that we produced and realize that there was no way we would eat it all. Anna and I wanted to start throwing it at people, but I felt bad making Matt’s house a mess, so we restrained the six-year-olds inside us.
After dinner, Matt dragged mattresses and air beds into the living room, cleared out the table and chairs, and made a stage. The more talented members of the group sang, danced, read poems, and performed skits. Anna lay back on our air mattress and took it all in. We were both incredibly happy to be there.
And then, finally: the concluding event was a dance party DJ’ed by Matt’s friend Kurt (he of sloppy toasts), replete with both recent hits and nineties classics. I am ashamed to admit that I apparently can still sing along to all of the words of a Spice Girls song. Someone had brought a tub of costumes so there were tutus, leotards, gold snakeprint spandex, suspenders, sequins, and stretchy lace numbers. We traded the costumes around and danced off our turkey calories. I have never danced on Thanksgiving, but I guess it kind of makes sense when you think about it.
Finally, it was late and Anna and I went home. As we drove back to my house, we marveled at how great the night had been and how many things we did have to be thankful.
