Thanksgiving Redux

An essay I wrote for school over Thanksgiving:

I am sitting in a carpeted room, in a new, trailer-like house, in Santa Rosa, California, and I am fixated on a large ceramic sculpture of a golden retriever lifting its leg on a fire hydrant.

Now that I think about it, there are dogs everywhere: dog oil paintings on the walls, dog-themed blankets draped over the denim sectional couch, and four actual dogs, a poodle, a black lab, a labradoodle, and one whose breed I do not recognize, chasing each other across the room as I try to focus on my conversation with my friend Ian’s dad, Frank, who is in the middle of a diatribe about the value of a graduate education. I tell him I don’t need to be convinced, that I’m enrolled in graduate school, and quite happy with it, but when I speak he only raises his voice higher to talk over me. Fine, I think, you can have this thirty minutes of my life.

The reason I find myself in this room on this day is that it is Thanksgiving, and as every American knows, on Thanksgiving, we must be with family. Even if it’s not your own family. And this is not my family.

Rather, I am spending the holiday with my friend Ian’s godparents, as well as his mom, dad, brother, and a smattering of people who resemble each other but may or may not be related—to each other or to Ian.

But back to Frank. It used to be that when I found myself in an unpleasant, or boring conversation with someone, I’d hang in there, sometimes for hours, because I would rather die from boredom than hurt someone’s feelings. I haven’t grown more courageous over time, only sneakier. I realize that my boyfriend Eric, who sits on my right, is slightly more of a pushover than me, and so I excuse myself to go to the restroom, and shamelessly, I never return.

Eric’s a big boy, I tell myself. If he doesn’t want to listen to Frank’s education diatribe, or his war stories, he can find his own escape. Eric tells me later that I missed out—Frank was fascinating, he said. I am reminded of being told that I should ask my grandfather more about his war stories—he was a test pilot during World War I—and how when I was young I couldn’t imagine why that would be interesting to anyone.

No matter. While Eric converses while Frank, I get myself a glass of white wine, which when I’m home I only drink very cold, but because I’m a guest, I accept it lukewarm. What is it about getting older that causes one to become more particular? Five years ago, I was drinking Carlo Rossi from a gallon glass jug while living communally with 12 others, washing our dishes with water, no soap, and these days lukewarm white wine can really throw me off, you know, really ruin my day.

In an hour, 27 of us will sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, which Ellie, Ian’s godmother, is setting the table for right now. Ellie is a very familiar character to me— she’s a ball of energy, attending to everyone’s needs, coordinating all the logistics, preventing awkward moments left and right. Waving her codependent wand, she steps in just when someone is about to feel uncomfortable—such as when her dad, Leo, who suffered a stroke 3 years ago and sits in a wheelchair, clears his throat to speak and risks not being understood. She is right there, ready to translate his slurred speech, to dole out light jokes during potentially awkward pauses. She is my mother, my aunts, my grandmother, my sister, and she is me.

Except that I have somewhat forsaken my rigorous training in passive aggression. If I’d followed my foremothers’ examples, I would be a better cook and a better listener, I would know how to make a bed so tightly you could bounce a coin off of it, and I would never fart in front of my boyfriend. Not ever.

For dinner, we will eat slightly distorted versions of what I eat when I’m home. We will eat cranberry sauce, for instance, freshly chopped with shredded orange rind--delicious. If I were home, we’d be passing around that perfect little half-pipe of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce from the can, in which only my mother and me ever partake. For dessert, instead of my mom’s homemade pecan, pumpkin, and apple pies (freshly baked for our crowd of 5 people), we will be eating Costco pies—lemon meringue, pecan, and pumpkin—freshly reheated under plastic wrap.

The main reason I didn’t go home this year is that it’s expensive to fly from San Francisco to Chicago, and I figure I can hold off until Christmas for that indulgence. But I also didn’t go home because Mom and Dad’s house is full—Aunt Betsy and Uncle Bob are in town from Texas, and well, even though Mom assures me that I am absolutely always welcome, I know that she gets stressed out when all of the beds are full. She probably wouldn’t get so stressed out, of course, if she lowered the bar a little bit—maybe didn’t cook pancakes, eggs, waffles, sausage, and bacon for every guest, every morning.

When I have guests, we go out for breakfast. And so it might seem that my mom and I are quite different. But in fact that’s not true. Because while I’m out enjoying breakfast at a restaurant with my houseguests, I will be carrying with me an intense feeling of guilt over being an inferior host. Which is no better than being chained to a waffle iron.

That’s not the only way in which I resemble my mom. Growing up, I was cast as the creative one, because I liked to write, and because I insisted upon hanging neon lace and a big silver hubcap on my bedroom wall. I was also absentminded. And, for a brief period during my teenage years, I left clothes strewn all over my room. So at some point I became the sloppy, flaky, artsy one.

But that assessment of me does not explain the fact that when I sit down to dinner at a restaurant and there’s a sticky spot on the table from the previous diner, it gives me the creeps, as in, it’s practically all I can think about until the server comes and wipes it away, and even then, I remember where it was.

I think about how my mom can never stay seated at the kitchen table after a meal because she finds the dirty dishes so distracting that she actually cannot function until they are clean. It used to annoy me that she would get up to do the dishes right away, but now—now it just makes me sigh. Because I understand. Laid back as I’d like to think I am, an extraordinary amount of my psychic space is filled with things like how I hate the sound of people cracking their gum.

Nevermind all that though, because today I am grateful. My boyfriend’s here, and Ian’s here, and his godmother is sweet, and I am about to eat this stuffing that Ian made with raisins and cinnamon and bourbon and it smells delicious.

It is not the same as my mother’s stuffing, but then, is my mother’s stuffing the same? In reality, she changes the recipe a little every year, and besides, as she and my Dad get older they do weird things like enroll in college classes, and spend time together, just the two of them, and talk about The Secret and how they’ll be visualizing me getting a great apartment.

So maybe they’re not who I thought they were, and I’m not who I think I am. And maybe Thanksgiving isn’t about family at all. Maybe it’s just about doing something, just one thing, the same every year, so that when things are different from what you remember, when you’re different from what you remember, you notice.

Thanks Given

Sure did miss Mom's sweet potato casserole this year--we spent the day up in Santa Rosa (wine country), with my friend Ian's family. Our meal consisted of Ian's killer stuffing (which includes bourbon, raisins, and cinnamon--yum!), as well as your basic turkey and mashed potatoes (in copious amounts, to my stomach's chagrin), and a wide variety of Costco pies (did they have lemon meringue in pilgrim times?). Overall, I regretted eating so much, but it was nice while it lasted.

Amazing how great it is to be with family-- any family--on that day.

On Friday, we drove up to beautiful Point Reyes, where we took a short but breathtaking hike, and enjoyed the sunset from the beach. I got to show Eric the place where I did my writing residency last summer-- which would have been a lovely moment if some strange woman hadn't come around the corner and looked at us like we'd interrupted her year-long vow of solitude. Ah well.

Here's a glimpse.

25 Days and Counting

My Google homepage is programmed to count down the remaining days in this semester. Today it tells me there are 25 days left. It's a sad admission--the fact that I'm eager, maybe even desperate, to move on from this 4 month period of practicing daily news journalism. I'm paying up the nose for it, after all-- I must be learning something, right?

Well, yes, I'm learning a ton. And I have dozens of opportnities at my fingertips, many of which I've taken advantage. But boy, I've come face to face with some combination of insecurity and aversion every time I've had to go out on some crazy assignment and ask random people about their feelings. Yesterday, doing a story on gas prices ($3.44/gallon for regular in CA) and Thanksgiving travel, I was actually ASKED TO LEAVE a particular gas station, because the owner said that by asking customers questions as they pumped their gas, I was essentially harrassing them. Can't say I disagree. I hate that part of this job. Some days, I wonder if that means I'm not cut out to be a journalist.

But then there are other days, days like this Saturday when I chatted with my dear friend and colleague Mary, a long-time reporter who I'll be accompanying to Central America this January. Mary runs a non-profit called Round Earth Productions, which produces radio stories throughout Latin America and distributes them to NPR, World Vision, MSNBC, and some other major outlets. I met her in Ecuador in May, as you may recall. Anyway, Mary and I will be going to Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Southern Mexico beginning January 2, to report on a bunch of stories. The ones I'll be in charge of are 1) on a Mayan rock band in Guatemala, and 2) some sort of effort to combat climate change in Mexico. Planning for, and talking about, and researching this trip-- gets me excited in a way that is so fundamental to why I'm in this field. It's about discovery, curiosity, adventure... and a quest for that perfect combination of profundity, humor, irony, and emotion that make a good story. And yet, when I'm standing at a gas station in South Berkeley, with my dorky little notepad and pen, asking my reluctant interviewee if high gas prices are going to affect her holiday plans, knowing that she'll say 'of course not,' somehow all of that inspiration and purpose seems so very far away.

Better get ready for work. Good cheer to all.

Unpleasant But Worthwhile

About a month ago, I started working 10 hours a week as a production assistant at PBS FRONTLINE/World, an international, experimental TV/web documentary outfit that grew out of Boston-based PBS Frontline.

I've been spending most of my time conducting research for a program airing tomorrow, called Extraordinary Rendition, about the U.S.'s controversial program involving transfering suspected terrorists to secret prisons in other countries where they are tortured. It's a pretty incredible, and incredibly disturbing, story, but definitely worth checking out. I also recommend the new movie on the same topic, called Rendition and starting Jake Gyllenhal and Reese Witherspoon. It's based on a true story.

Extraordinary Rendition airs tomorrow, at 9pm Central Time, on PBS (Channel 11 if you're in Chicago, Mom). Hope you'll check it out. Here's a preview:

Hallelujah!

Doo-dee-doo, hurrah, hurrah! What a dandy little slice of success... I'm going to have a short piece in the New York Times magazine, of all places!!!! Could it be true? Why, yes! Indeed, it is true! Can't tell you what it's about yet, of course-- that's top secret information. But what I can tell you is that they pay $1.50 a word! Yeehaw!

In other news, we're all moved into our new place-- and it's fabulously peaceful. You can write me a letter longhand, if you like-- at 1612 Hopkins St., Apt. 2, Berkeley, CA 94707. Pictures coming soon.

Love to all.