But this year I feel very forunate to be going where I went last year.
Some bookstore owners in Cancun that sell my books invited me to their home. Every year they do a ham and turkey and invite anybody in the foreign community who wants to come. People bring food.
(I'm going to get some sinful desserts from this Chinese restauarant/upscale French patisserie with Cordon-bleu trained pastry chef...I know, I know... this isn't the real world, it's Mexico. The cool thing is, everything will be open because Nov 27 means nothing here.)
It might song odd to people used to multi-generational get-togethers, that I would be comfortable and feel fortunate to be in a group of strangers.
But strangers are only strangers until you get to know them. Expatriates are used to moving their roots and I felt very much at home with the highly international crowd there last year. (And I usually don't even LIKE scuba instructors and time share sales people) Also the owner and her sister are very cool people I hit it off with immediately a couple of years ago.
This year, of course, I'll know more of the folks. But that's beside the point. It's not like auld lang syne, more like travelers at an inn... come together by circumstance and enjoying the company. Great bunch. I'm really lookng forward to it.
And thankful to have the opportunity. Thanksgiving is always a little weird for American abroad. To me it's the greatest holiday--no religous claptrap, not presents and stress---just get with people you love, eat and be grateful to have the abilityt to love and have something to eat.
But by the same same time, it's so American-centric it's often hard for some to replace the family feel in a place where nobody around them celebrates and the society, even climate isn't in keeping with traditions.
I've spent Thanksgiving by myself. Once I spent the day eating goat meat stew in a restaurant in the Tijuana hills with this dancer I was going with at the time. Well, okay, stripper. Well, okay, you want to get technical, prostitute. Had a nice time, though. She was very impressed by the concept of the day and the idea of a day to give thanks for things. Which, she decided, was really gratefulness for life itself.
I spent Thanksgiving in prison, right after my fortieth birthday. And you know what was funny. I was REALLY, REALLY thankful, more intensely than any other T Day I can remember, because I was out of the stinking jail system and up in the relative comfort, safety, and relaxed atmosphere of the state system.
So you never know.
Thing is, we get conned into thinking it's all about food.
It's not about having a full stomach, it's about having a full heart.
And there is nothing you can buy or cook or turn on that will do that for you.
And people like me, who live on the outskirts of the human family, are all the more thankful for times when there is good food and drink, good company, and good thoughts about what's really important in the universe and how we should feel about it for a moment or two.
RFW2nd
I personally believe that gratitude is the key to happiness, and if we can find things to be thankful for, we can feel happy.
I had a regular, family-get-together-and-eat-turkey Thanksgiving on the day, and then today (Saturday), I went to a funeral for my cousin's wife, and spent time with cousins I haven't seen in a while.
Lots of things bring people together, and we can be grateful for the togetherness, even if there is loss and sorrow involved as well.