This Thanksgiving – bright, sunny, crisp. I know the way the trees look this time of year: tall skeletons leaning into each other, swaying softly. The smell of smoke from the chimney when you leave for a walk in the woods. Our neighbor perched in a tree waiting for the deer. This year we are blessed to share Thanksgiving with my mom’s sister and her family. A full house, the sound of laughter from nine people around a table. It’s beautiful – a break, a respite, a time to be still. I love America so much, but we do so many things wrong – not Thanksgiving – we have nailed it on this one.
This time last year I slept in a bed that wasn’t my own in a house that wasn’t my own and ate breakfast with a family that wasn’t my own. It broke my heart. It was the most beautiful semester. I am thankful for it all, every day of it. But I was away, so far away, from home, from the tree skeletons I know so well, from my family, from the people that held me together. So the nine of us there held us together. Our program director held us together. My host family kept me close. We were taken care of for Thanksgiving. We shared a meal that made us too full, shared laughter and spoke in more English than we should have and became what we needed on that day, so far from everything we knew.
I’m thrilled to be back here, sitting under a white comforter, watching the trees move, knowing that I am home. I have returned to my querencia and I couldn’t be more thankful.
The end of something has a different taste to it. I don’t know where I’ll be this time next year. My fingers are crossed for a full time modestly paid job – just enough to support myself and maintain forward motion. I don’t know if I’ll have almost a week to come home for Thanksgiving. Certainly Christmas break will be much shorter. So to be here now, to sit on the road and watch the cows cross the creek, to lean into my horse’s neck and wake up slowly in the bed I’ve slept in since childhood – it’s a particularly beautiful thing, a particularly sweet feeling.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours – I hope it’s blessed in many ways.
