Not a traditional Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day was a sharp, damp denouement from ten days of shock after being terminated from the Sounder.
Beginning on Monday, my daughter, who recently moved to Seattle after being laid off from her job in Portland, was suffering from a severe case of nausea and vomiting. Appendicitis and hepatitis loomed in my mind, so all Thanksgiving plans were in abeyance until I figured out how she was going to fare.
As I drove from Anacortes to Seattle, I was struck by “the real world,” not having been off the island without a firm deadline to return for the the last two years.

Happily for both of us, my daughter is living with my older sister just north of the University District in Seattle.

After arriving at my sister’s home, I walked to the neighborhood store to buy ginger ale and tomato soup for my daughter. My sister came home from work as a complex care nurse, seething about the rudeness of her passive-aggressive co-worker. We joked about the freedom of being unemployed, and planned a road trip, one of the traditions and pastimes my daughter and I share.

We watched a TV show and I realized that my sister doesn’t have cable or satellite television. My nephew Matt came by to drop off a mirror for the bathroom cabinet that has been mirror-less for the last two years. My sister is not in a rush about anything.

I asked my daughter what she would do if she could do anything she liked, and after saying, “You mean after traveling around the Mediterranean?” she told me she’d like to be involved in international relations.

I told her I’d like to just go to bed for a week.

The next day, I called my husband on Orcas and we agreed to play it by ear for Thanksgiving Day. I told him I felt torn between “celebrating” Thanksgiving Day with him and my daughter, but he had already been to Seattle on Monday and Tuesday. He said, “Don’t worry about me,” and we are honest with each other about our feelings, so I appreciated his generosity.

My sister was going to her in-laws for the traditional dinner. She had made a turkey the Sunday before and leftovers were still in her fridge.
I’d had turkey dinner at the American Legion two weeks ago, and my daughter had no stomach for turkey and dressing and gravy.

My other nephew John came by and told me of his new job writing grants. John traveled the world for 10 months last year, and he discouraged us from our Mexican road trip plans. While my daughter napped, I spent an hour on the phone on hold with the unemployment agency, then was disconnected.

Later, my daughter felt up to a cabbage salad that I make and gobbled down three helpings.
That night my sister demanded I make chocolate sauce for ice cream, and I had more than my share, which kept me awake most of the night. My sister got up at her usual 5 a.m. and I woke on Thanksgiving Day with a headache.
But my daughter felt better and we took her dog — a 130-pound French mastiff that I’m still a little afraid of — to the dog park on Lake Washington and had a long honest talk about our family. A long overdue talk in my opinion, but at last she felt okay to talk to me about it. Later she told me she felt relieved.

Then my sister took us out for breakfast at a neighborhood joint and we talked about conspicuous consumption and alternative uses of energy and whether or not I should be a yenta to my unmarried daughter and how my sister was going to enjoy Christmas in New Jersey with her prospective in-laws.

I heard from my two sons, one in Michigan and one in Maryland and was glad they could get through the phone lines, which I’d expected to be overloaded.

We came home and I made soup from the turkey carcass and watched the movie “Volver,” with Spanish subtitles. My daughter looks like a cross between Penelope Cruz and Michelle Obama, and I’m so complemented when people say she resembles me. Her dog smelled the turkey on me and desperately wanted to inhale me, but finally he slept.

Both my sister and I nodded off during the movie, but we agreed at the end that it was a foreign film, and what would the poor sister-daughter do who had killed her mother’s husband?

Then it was time to leave to catch the ferry home. I realized I was hungry, and stopped at a QFC for a turkey sandwich. All the radio programs were dry or dreary, so I turned it off and sang the program for the Orcas A Cappella and Choral Society concerts coming up. I made it to the ferry with a half-hour to spare, and allowed myself to hit the wall.
I felt blue and tired and lonely. I gave thanks for all the people and circumstances I’m grateful for, and told myself it was okay to cry if I felt like it. After boarding the ferry, I looked out the car window at the black waters — I was first in line at the front of the ferry.
I was tired from two weeks of stress and change and compensating and shifting from my former, overloaded but exciting schedule to my open-ended “new” life. I didn’t “have” to do anything and I didn’t want to do anything, but finally I opened my journal and wrote about how tired I was, how sad I felt, and remembered the kind words of an Orcas neighbor who reminded be that I will feel sad and it’s okay.
I came home and my husband brought home care packages of turkey dinner and dessert, and I ate some chocolate pie. He made a fire and I fell asleep in the chair by the fireplace.
It was a low-key, moment-by-moment Thanksgiving, and just right for me.