thanksgiving

My family has never really been into Thanksgiving. In elementary school they make you write down what you’re thankful for, there’s a four-day vacation set aside for the event, Christmas songs start playing in the dining hall, and endless commercials on television depict family gatherings. So even without the actual celebration, it’s impossible for me not to be thankful for the family and friends, and the little and big things, that comprise my life around this time of year. But this year may be the first where I was consciously thankful for not just the things I have but for the things I value that could be for anyone, for everyone, now or in the near future or in the distant future. The moment I saw Seattle from the airplane, scattered lights against mostly black, I felt so grateful for cities, for groups of people in one place. I don’t live in a city. When we drove through his neighborhood in the dark, I could see the vague shapes of the many many trees and piles of shadowy leaves lining the sidewalks, and I was thankful for childhood. I never played outside in the streets of my neighborhood as a kid. We drove up to his house and I could barely take in everything because I was amazed by his front door for a good twenty minutes, after my two-second introduction to it. I can’t even describe or envision it anymore but I remember thinking that it instantly felt right for a home, for a place with stories, with a past, with people with collective experiences. Then seeing the photos on the walls and the old-fashioned bathrooms and the random oddities and the creaky attic, I felt such gratitude for what people put into their lives, and how they turn it into a tangible thing to remember and share. My house is ordinary and a place that I love for its association with good things but not a place that embodies those things, and I’d never seen a house quite like this one, where I could feel so much of what means something to people in each step of the wooden staircase. And that was the feeling of thankfulness I felt most intensely—I was so thankful for home—and I wasn’t even in my own home. It didn’t matter that these things were things I hadn’t experienced in quite the same way as I saw them; I still felt like I had them or could have them someday, and that other people could have it too. That these are just free floating entities that surround us.

With that as both the backdrop and forefront of my experience, the actual things we did were a lot of fun too. I got in late on Wednesday night so that was mostly meeting his family and seeing a bit of the house, and easing into contentment. On Thursday there was driving, viewpoints and outdoors. First we made a stop at the end of 35th (?) Avenue to see one of the floating bridges across Lake Washington. From afar it effortlessly slides into the water. In Viretta Park we saw the houses of Kurt Cobain and Howard Schultz (the founder of Starbucks). Then we went to the Japanese Garden, a small place that we needlessly navigated with a map, and drove through the aboretum. Washington is absolutely gorgeous, and despite hearing much about it from him, I was surprised. I don’t think I ever had any picture of what the state might look like. The trees change color, and I like the presence of water flanked by mountains. We visited the University of Washington campus and from there I saw a faint view of Mount Rainier, and I’d never seen a mountain like that before, nestled atop clouds so that it seems to rise out of nowhere, and glazed with such an ethereal white. From Queen Anne we got a nice view of the skyline, and in West Seattle saw the skyline across the water. I distinctly remember thinking how I like that water is such a part of all of our cities—Boston, San Francisco, New York, Seattle. I think our final stop was a Japanese/Asian market whose name I can’t remember, where we stood before rows and rows of colored packages of candy with hilarious descriptions and images. This amused us for a good bit. I remember thinking that it was good to laugh like that.





Then Thanksgiving at his house—the food was indescribably amazing and without a doubt the best Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had. I’ve never sat down at a table like that with all the traditional foods. It was an interesting group of family, and I was relieved that I wasn’t the focus of any conversation. Afterwards we just loafed, and it made me feel what it would be like if we had each other all the time and could revel in nothing-time.

On Friday we did the touristy, mostly indoors stuff. We went to the Experience Music Project which looks strange from the outside (it’s supposed to be a melted guitar) and houses some really cool music relics and paraphernalia on the inside. I liked how their exhibits on particular people displayed things that inspired them—other artists, books, people, anything. You see them interacting with the world just like anyone else would, taking from things they hear and see and incorporating that into their own art. The Northwest Passage focused on all the different movements the area contributed to the history of music, and I like thinking of music as germinating in seeds, pockets of the country. I also liked seeing all the handwritten notes, lyrics, personal writings—the physical and beginning steps of creative acts. After that we had lunch at the Space Needle; it was cloudy at first but cleared a bit later on, and was a nice way to be immersed in the drizzle and grayness that he so appreciates. Then we took the monorail to downtown, and that was one of my favorite parts of the day. It was cold, and there were lots of people on the streets, and you could see the outburst of the holiday atmosphere. An outdoors Starbucks stand handed us free samples of mint hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top. We breezed through a couple of the malls, everything decorated and festive. Stepping outside of one we encountered a street performing group who sang amazing renditions of Under the Boardwalk and My Girl. We watched amidst a gathering crowd, before having a fun ride on the carousel. Then we went to Pike Place Market, where the fresh fish and seafood reminded me of San Francisco. He’d had a lot of memories there, and it was nice walking through the aisles and imagining him there at other times in the past. Then we saw the Seattle Public Library; with its clear ceilings and walls it must be wonderful to read there on sun-drenched days. We had dinner at his favorite Ethiopian restaurant, and left tired from full stomachs and busy moments.



We prepared for the two-hour drive to their little home in the country. Along the way we passed through a series of small towns, and I liked hearing about them. I like how that kind of thing matters to him, to know about the people and places around him. When we got to the place, I felt the way I did when I entered his house the first time. I stood there and fell in love with the house’s past. It was completely run down when they first got it, and they’ve built and painted and reshaped and fixed over the years. Such devotion, and such desire and potential; to believe in something like that and to stay committed to your changing visions of it, is so representative of what I would like to emulate. The sky was dense with stars, and it was quiet, and our own space. He built a fire, and we played board games and ate soup and crackers. I remember thinking before I fell asleep that I’d lost the sense of where I was situated, in terms of the year and geographical place—not just on a break in between months of school and not in Cambridge, but really, away and apart from all of that.

The next morning serious sunshine flooded the rooms and it was a gorgeous day. We put on boots (initially slightly ridiculous but almost immediately fun) to traverse the trails, and I liked hearing about the stories of the place when he was younger. I like to think of him in that open space. The drive back to Seattle was great, seeing all of the outdoors in the daytime. Snow on mountains, and sun shedding light on them. Later we drove along Lake Washington Blvd., which was absolutely beautiful, and I couldn’t imagine just living there without being constantly amazed. That was one of the nice things about it, the ease with which people lived there, taking the beauty naturally without losing appreciation for it. At night we went to Pioneer Square, a quaint shopping area pretty lighted in the early evening, and briefly visited the waterfront. Then his mother made us a delicious last-night dinner, and we spent much of after-dinner time taking the annual Christmas photo of he and his younger brother. His dad showed me the ones taken over the years (going backwards), and each one was more adorable than the last. It’s difficult to explicate how touching it was, to see how they valued little traditions at the same time that they strayed from the norm with their quirks and humor.




As evident by the driving force behind my last entry, I’ve been, generally, a little down. Thanksgiving was three days of pure happiness. The kind that hits you as you’re experiencing it, the kind that needs no retrospect memory to magnify it. It was impossible to say goodbye.