How Odd the Disconcerting Replication of Otherwise Ordinary Things

Hello again.

I officially made it through my first ever Thanksgiving away from home or, if you’re not partial to celebrating that day for national or ethical reasons “It was Thursday just a couple days ago and I didn’t lose my mind.” As it turns out, I didn’t do many of the things I thought I would. I didn’t sit in a sports bar, Bukowskiing my way through some fair bit of poorly planned coping mechanizing. Nor did I follow through with my ideal plan: Buy a lot of bread and then wander around town feeding crows. Did I care that this would’ve made me look like a Home Alone character left on the cutting room floor? I did not! And to be honest, I really was looking forward to that even if there was a better than average shot of all the birds ignoring me. That would indeed have been a grave blow to the wobbly and unreliable morale.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to face any of those trials and tribulations that at this point are relegated to the realm of the ‘strictly fantastical’ that is usually reserved for poorly built metaphors and the idle hopes for a second date when the first date was a disaster. No, instead I wound up going to spend the holiday with my boss and her family. I’ll admit that I was trepidatious; I’m not necessarily partial to people and, even when I am, it usually works out best when they’re someone I’ve known for….let’s just ballpark it and say (at least) 19 years, 4 months, and 13 days. But, I’ve been oddly happy these past couple months so I wasn’t looking all that forward to ushering in some sort of rampaging depressive episode because some crows ignored me. No, I was bound and determined to turn the tides in my favor and avoid all rocky outcroppings or gigantic icebergs that James Cameron should’ve seen coming. So I called my boss at noon on Thanksgiving Day and said, paraphrasing “What the hell! Why not! This seems like a better idea than manufacturing my own psychological downfall!”

Since I routinely say things out loud because I’ve mistaken my very real reality for some sort of mystical charm palace, it’s possible I did use those exact words. We may never know. Although I’ll keep you all posted if I get called into an HR meeting with some haste once Monday rolls around.

So I rode with my boss and her unstoppably chipper daughter out to Beaverton, dodging all manner of horrors along the way (Most notably: Red lights and this one really weird guy who decided the darkest part of the evening was a good time to walk down the middle of a one way road). I sat at their table, meeting a husband and another daughter, both charming in their incredibly distinct ways, and felt oddly at home for being somewhere that was nothing like the memories I had of the times I’d spent with the family I’d left back home. Instead of old memories, there were old stories that weren’t mine. Instead of family jokes where I knew every punchline, there was a new writer’s room. And instead of the slow quiet that often lives with a group of people who know each other impossibly well, there was incessant laughter, new customs and traditions, and food that was a far cry from the Thanksgivings of Bismarck, North Dakota: Ganje Edition.

There was also a gorgeous bird who sat on my shoulder for the better part of dinner. And if you know anything about me at all, that is about as good as things can get. Also? That bird gave me kisses when I left. So. Your move, 2022. Beat that.

This is all to say that, it was the strangest feeling. Days don’t mean quite as much to me as they used to and while I used to think that was just a side effect of being me, I’m beginning to realize in meeting more people that it’s more just a side effect of being human. Birthdays, when they’re not counting down to tobacco or booze, are just days. Holidays, more often than not, are little glimmers of what used to be where, if you sit completely still, you can almost see the memories of the child you used to be that are now hidden deep in the cracks of floorboards once new. And in this strange state, everything just…blends together. But that doesn't mean that those days don’t still mean something when they wander around once a year. Because more often than not, they do whether we realize it or not.

I suppose, in that way, it is always better to be an echo than nothing at all.

And me? I was an echo. Not in my own safely-structured bit of familial familiarity, but in someone else’s. A strange place where I was allowed to be myself, but even he felt like someone new. And I found myself welcomed and happy in a strange place I never thought I’d be: Sitting at a new table, so far from my old one, and taking a chance at being someone who embraced new traditions instead of wandering vaguely in the hope of finding something I wasn’t even sure was there. And yes, there will be more than time enough for me to decide next time around whether I’m ready to feed some crows (I’m bound to make that happen eventually!) or find something else that can be genuinely specially mine. I can’t always rely on the kindness of new acquaintances. But for one day it felt lovely to do just that, because it was precisely the kind of thing that I might never have done back home, specifically because I never would’ve needed to.

So I suppose, in the end, this is all to say that moving away can have the strangest effect on you. Every little old thing that used to be is gone now, and you’re just a child playing with blocks in the hope of building the kind of personal memories and traditions that will reverberate through the lives of those who will one day wander into yours. But it doesn’t have to always be that way. Sometimes you can just go out on a limb, tell yourself to be polite, friendly, and the ideal guest, and accept an embrace or a hand that’s offered to you. In that moment, you become a fly on the wall, a spectator to another life or lives, and for just a second you can feel what it’s like to be part of something so much bigger than everything and anything you’ve ever known.

That time will end, it always does. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And even if there are few traditions to be found in the lives and memories of others over the course of a single meal, there will always be the promise of those memories. And memories, if they’re good enough, just might last forever.

This was supposed to be my first Thanksgiving alone. But I wasn’t.

There was laughter, there was joy, and I got kissed by a bird named Sunny.

It’s hard to imagine ever forgetting something like that.