Big Little Thanksgiving
Our socially distanced Thanksgiving. I like imagining how strange it will be, someday, to look back on these pictures, to remember the ways we made do in 2020.
It became a common refrain over the past few weeks: “Thanksgiving is going to look different this year.” The gatherings might be smaller, and might take place outside; the menu might be streamlined, with traditional side dishes jettisoned for practicality’s sake; the dress code might be casual, and hugs and kisses might be absent. And yesterday, this refrain proved to be true—our tiny gathering did look different, with masks and lunch on the porch and separate tables—but today, the day after, I keep thinking of something else, which is that Thanksgiving just felt different this year.
In years past, I’d wake up on that Thursday morning with a sense of expectation and anticipation, a sort of keyed-up energy, a hyperawareness that today is a big deal because today is Thanksgiving. A day when traditions must be upheld, when rituals must be enacted. And don’t get me wrong: I love traditions, including (and especially) the traditions that define my in-law’s Thanksgiving gathering: singing the old songs, reading the old poems, opening the special-delivery box of Graeter’s ice cream. I love how long the traditions have lasted, and how they accumulate more and more meaning as the years go by. How they make the holiday feel like a Holiday, with a capital H.
This year, I woke up on Thursday morning and it felt like … well, it felt like an ordinary morning. I drank my coffee, and went out for a run, and wondered why Central Park was so ghostly quiet—and then had to remind myself that it was the holiday. We packed our bag full of side dishes and pies (Andrew’s dad provided the turkey), and drove down the Turnpike, and even as we pulled into the driveway in Philadelphia and exchanged our Happy Thanksgivings, the day persisted in feeling like … well, like an ordinary day. We ate our turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie, and my eyes and ears and tastebuds kept telling me it was Thanksgiving, and about half the time I felt aware of the Thanksgiving-ness of it all, but the other half of the time, the awareness just … slipped away. It was like the grip of my mind went loose, and the knowledge drifted up into the sky, like a bright balloon gone astray.
In a typical year, on Thanksgiving eve, the whole family would troop down to the neighborhood Chinese restaurant for dinner. This year, on Thanksgiving eve, I took a long walk through Central Park with a girlfriend. We talked, and circled the reservoir, and noticed how beautiful the sunset was. We’ve taken a lot of these walks through the pandemic, and that particular walk was, in many ways, no different. It was Thanksgiving eve, but I wasn’t really aware that it was Thanksgiving eve. Only as we were saying goodbye did I remember to ask her: Oh yeah! What’s your plan for tomorrow? Cooking anything special?
I’m a sentimental person. I love traditions and rituals. When we get to the other side of this vaccine, I’ll be celebrating their return with gusto. My very favorite Thanksgiving ritual is when we go around the table and say what we’re thankful for. It’s a way of savoring the good parts of the year, the moments of abundance and fortune; a way of putting everything into perspective; of giving coherent voice to gratitude. But I’ve been struck, throughout this week, throughout this year, at how errant and unpredictable my surges of gratitude are. How overwhelming and unspeakable. I could sit down at the dinner table, lift my wineglass, try to put these feelings into words, and maybe I could capture a little bit of it, maybe, but mostly, my words would fall short.
Let’s go ahead and state the obvious. 2020 has been a hard year. But there is so much I’m grateful for. Sometimes the scale of the gratitude feels unfathomably big (my family, my health, my livelihood, Joe Biden), and sometimes the scale feels small (the pumpkin pie in my lap as we drive down the Turnpike, a walk in the park with a girlfriend). Whether big or small, often I find it easier to come back to these gratitudes in the moments of quiet. The moments when you step back from the world a little, and the world keeps on existing, and you don’t really need to do anything. You can just take it all in. That’s what yesterday felt like. I think it was the very ordinariness of it, the splendid low-key quiet of it, which made it possible. A day not just for giving thanks, but for feeling it. Sometimes it’s good to say it out loud, to articulate what you are thankful for. Sometimes it’s also good to let it radiate in silence, to let the gratitude sink in, to make room for the overwhelming unspeakability of it.
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I mentioned above that I’m grateful for Joe Biden. God bless this decent, kind, normal man. But also, God bless the whispers of normalcy that his presence is already giving rise to. Here is one small example, which continues to delight me, nerd that I am. Yesterday, on the drive down, Andrew and I listened to a podcast about what foreign policy to expect from the Biden administration. And yes, there will be clashes, intervention vs. isolation, hawks vs. doves, and maybe the arguments will get pretty heated, but holy crap, it felt good to realize that those arguments will be about things of actual substance. Not, like, the erratic temper tantrums of the Moldy Cheetoh-in-Chief. Intellectual disagreement has never sounded so sexy!!!