This time last year, I was alone. It was the third consecutive year that I would be away from my family, my kitchen table, the leaves tightly fastened to the branches of oak and mesquite trees. I didn’t really care, because Thanksgiving has always been a mere respite from school for me. It doesn’t mean family or food or thanks. It’s just a break with a large meal I pick at.
The day before Thanksgiving last year, I went to Riverside Park and collected a bagful of colorful leaves. I didn’t know what to do with them. I pondered mailing them as good tidings to my parents and sister in Texas. In the end, I piled them on a table in my bedroom and snapped pictures, which I forgot about and later uncovered when I developed the roll of film months later. (The rest of the pictures were of a blizzard that came to symbolize the end of something. The first pictures were of fall leaves. Leaves to snow, color to starkness, changing seasons - it was all too perfectly symbolic).
Hours before Thanksgiving dinner last year, I ate lunch at Subway. I wasn’t sure if I’d like the dinner, as I’ve never been crazy about turkey or stuffing and gravies. I found the company nice and the food okay. That night, I went home hungry and walked the streets looking for a store with milk and cereal. The solitude was so crisp and beautiful. A lot seemed possible.
This year, I have Cade. I’ll be with his family and surrogate family around different dining tables. I’ll take digital pictures of leaves (yes, more leaves!), which I’ll quickly upload to this blog. I don’t think I’ll be hungry after a Thanksgiving lunch and dinner.
There are times when I look at Cade and think that he’s mine, has always been mine, but other times when I realize I’m looking at a guy I met just nine months ago. It doesn’t seem like much, but that’s long enough to gestate. And we have.
It’ll be our first Thanksgiving together - the first one in four years with someone who feels like home, though home is so far away.
I feel like I already have the longer piece of the wishbone.
