Dead Bird Day.

Thanksgiving.  A time where people come together to do cheesy things that no one actually likes doing.  It's a time where people pretend to be nice to each other, but really, they want to tear everyone's heads off.  Extended families are weird.  Someone always says something stupid.  Someone finishes all the stuffing and/or whipped cream before you get any.  And then there's my favourite.  The lame speeches about how thankful everyone is for things in their life, making the whole night sound like some Miss America contest.

Why so cynical?  I'm not of my own...just others.

I'm an observer.  I always have been.  I like to stand to the edge and watch people and make up stories about them in my head.  Maybe they're true, who knows.  But, it's the people that you know, that are harder to make up stories about.  I tend to judge people on how they've treated me as a child.  Did they pay attention to me?  I know this seems like a horrible thing to do, but I've found that you could tell a lot about a person by the way they treated you in the past, and what you heard was said.  There's something about watching, that kind of brings all the bad stuff out and float to the surface.  The superficiality of it all.

The thing is, in our small tradition that my family has had on Thanksgiving, it's never really been about the image.  It can't be when you're trying to smuggle turkeys back home or when the power goes out the minute you put the bird in the oven.  It's been hard trying to do what you're used to doing when you're in a country completely foreign to you.  But you cope, you manage, and you end up making your own traditions.  You end up remembering all the cock ups that happened because they made the day a little more special by bringing everyone together...even if you were standing in the kitchen yelling 'Oh shit'.

Thanksgiving has been about each other.  It's been about all the dumb things that you did to get to that point, but you made it together.  It's been about giving a little piece of home to the people that are so far from it and need it the most.

Here, we have to make our own family, because they're so far away from us.  My extended family not only includes my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins in the states, it includes aunts and uncles in Sweden, England, Australia, Thailand and so many other places.  Thanksgiving is a time for that love to go to all of those people.  Our friends become our family, because they're the ones yelling 'oh shit' in the kitchen with us.  They're the ones showing up early just to help set your table.

But most importantly, family is family.  We miss people in the states.  I know this well as I spent my first Thanksgiving away from my parents last year.  It felt foreign, but I had my friends, and I had her family, and I made my own little family for the night.  I missed my parents and it was hard, but I had several laughs and became part of someone else's clan.  That night, they were giving me a touch of home that I had missed more than anything else.  They were giving me what our family had given so many others on that day.  A place to be a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, a daughter, a son.

This Thanksgiving, I am not alone, but I know that this is a blessing because I know there will probably be many in my future where I do not have family close by to run off to on this day.  I know that people out there will let me be their family for the night and I hope that I can do the same for someone else one day.  This Thanksgiving I'm with my parents and my brother, and it's a good feeling being home...because, yes, this is my home.

So, in the spirit of making a mockery out of all things cheesy, I'll make my list.  It's short and simple.  I'm thankful for grace, hope, faith, and love.  I'm thankful for family, however diverse it may be.  I'm thankful for parents who support their daughter through the complete 180 that she's turned on her major in college.  I'm thankful for the coolest brother in the world.  I'm thankful for amazing grandparents whom I adore.  I'm thankful for extended family, for all their quirks.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to be something different, to step outside tradition, to make our own tradition. 

And most of all, I'm thankful to be able to share that grace, hope, faith, and love on this day of mass bird murder and empty whipped cream cans, because without those things...we'd all be dead.

Comments

[BobS]

There should be a holiday called thankstaking where we give thanks for all the greedy things we have done. Perhaps it would then allow us to take a step back and realize how selfish we really are.