So November 28th is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. It’s a national holiday, a federal holiday, and so banks are closed, lots of offices are closed if you have that kind of work, though most people in the service sector are still working.
It’s a day to give thanks, to commemorate the Pilgrims and the Native Americans living in peace and feasting after their first year of hardship. Most of us know it’s absolute horseshit and revisionist history that placates white audiences for the grotesque level of genocide committed against the indigenous peoples of the Americas, but I digress.
Our family uses the day to celebrate what little we have, and I will roast the turkey, make potato salad, banana pudding, stuffing, my brother and his family come every year. My sweet sister-in-law will bring her broccoli casserole, and a pie, and we’ll all sit down and eat until we are full, talking about just about anything (politics will always come up but I tend to evade because I know my politics are wildly different than theirs), and then we’ll watch a Christmas movie together to kick off the holiday season.
It doesn’t seem like much, or maybe it just seems like the common activity for many families, and in that I can say the tradition continues, though for the past few years my mom has been absent, and that is always keenly felt. She was a truly good woman, and she had two favorite holidays:
Thanksgiving, because she got to see and then feed her precious family, and Christmas, because she loved seeing her grandbabies opening their gifts. She was always a child at heart, and took great joy in seeing her family happy.
I try to be thankful, and sometimes it’s hard to be, because we are poor, financially we’re doing worse now than we were even 4 years ago, and it seems like every institution wants a piece of us: whether it’s the IRS breathing down our necks for something we didn’t do, medical insurance companies threatening to garnish wages if we don’t pay, a landlord talking about raising rent again, and that doesn’t even get into the crises outside of our home, our own government wanting to make people like me persona non grata.
It’s just not a great place to be, not a good life I’m leading, and for someone who just wants peace and to love others in that peace, there’s a fuck load of strife and interference that seems to come this way instead.
Yet, as I say, I will try to be thankful, because I see so much grief, so much sadness in the world, so many people suffering, and I will take a moment to try and appreciate what little I do have. That doesn’t mean I have no right to complain, hell no, this isn’t the oppression olympics, many of us are struggling, and some are in dire straits and my heart goes out to them, too, right now.
Still, I will try to be thankful, today, and try to cherish what I have because I know how quickly it can be taken away forever.
So for what it’s worth, I hope your day is filled with people you love, that you have plenty to eat, and that you have somewhere safe and warm to lay your head. I love you, you are not alone, and I am thankful that you’re here.
.Red
