It’s amazing how far back one’s memory can go. With one episodic memory to the next, those recalls are forever carved into my hippocampus. This time of year is always so happy for people, but for me it is the time of year I wish to curl into a very tight ball and hope to get swallowed inside my bed.

God, I hate Thanksgiving. Ok so, we’ll just go in and grab some food, say hello, and go. I don’t want to eat in front of people I don’t know! Ugh! Shit, we’re here. Keep it together, it’s no big deal.

The car stopped in front of the West End tri-level home, I hope I’m dressed ok for this last minute jaunt.

Wait, your Aunt lives across the way from your parents? Weird, but ok. I at least met his parents once or twice so that should be comforting. I’m just a friend having Thanksgiving finger food with his family, no biggie.

I nervously walk in with you into a kitchen where everyone greeted us with a loud hello and a bombardment of hugs. The kitchen was full of people and my hands immediately clammed up. There was food everywhere, including a dining table with more sugar than Dolly Parton’s kisses. You introduced me to your Granny, a small, white-haired woman who had a spirit about her that reminded me of a sweeter version of Sophia from Golden Girls. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me in for a hug and said how she was happy to have me. The rest of this afternoon would be her referring to me as your girlfriend, which you vehemently deny and reiterate the “friends” moniker. Well this is embarrassing, but yes Granny, keep it up!

Your family is warm, gracious, and very hospitable. They treat me like I’d always been one of their own.

Who are these people? Are these the actual Waltons? His uncle is a bit of a curmudgeon and doesn’t really fit in this scene, but Jesus, why is everyone so nice? Is there alcohol here anywhere? Did someone say it’s time to pray? Shhhh!

There would be so many more holiday gatherings as this in my future. Soon I’d be promoted to girlfriend, and then to fiancé, and lastly to wife. It became an exhausting holiday crawl for us that began with my mother’s “Sansgiving”. My mom never had good guests at Thanksgiving, EVER. My step-father’s family were slightly better than white trash to say the least. They did not understand culture and usually came with bad manners and lack of social etiquette. My cousin’s in-laws were on the opposite end of that spectrum and I could not figure out how his mother-in-law fit in the door with the amount of pretension she brought in with her. I will never forget her face when I asked her if she prefered a Malbec over a Syrah. Yes, bitch I know my wines. Everyone was always rude there and my mom served them like some subservient house maid, not one offering to help in any way.

Eating Thanksgiving with your family was like some picturesque Douglass Crockwell painting. Your mom cooked about as much as my mom did, but never as good. Your entire family would attend from both sides. I would secretly WTF your dad’s sister’s outfits, as though she had come from the prairie and forgotten her bonnet, yet her husband fascinated me working for NASA, yet had the uncanny ability to be condescending as fuck. In the early days, I would enjoy analyzing your cousins’ boyfriends and rank their inability to engage as anything but boring ass white folk. We were the proverbial black sheep of both our families. Your mom would ease any conflict arising by offering seconds, and your Aunt would be boisterous and jolly telling family stories while her husband’s eternal frown made for an Archie Bunker scenario. Little did i realize he would be my favorite companion during the holidays. He was intellectual and funny and I was heartbroken when he took his own life. You would have thought our families would mesh into one less house to visit, but my mother was rarely invited if at all. I do believe it is because she brought with her a very opinionated tongue that did not sound the same as the sugary sweet deflections of your kin. I was relieved by it honestly, my mom has a tendency to put everyone on edge while yours likes to hypnotize with kindness.

We did not football. We hate football. We do however love finger foods, so after a nice nap, you and I would follow the rest of the family and church goers to our final holiday destination — your Aunt’s house. As I sat around that kitchen table enjoying the shrimp cocktail and lumpiang (I was sincerely grateful for those rolls the Filipino neighbor made), I always reminisced to what was once a small kitchen. The renovated one accommodated the growing number of guests and children born through the years, but the thing it did the best was hold your Granny’s voice in my head from that very first Thanksgiving. I miss her. You and I spent much time in that kitchen, with family, mourning, celebrating, and playfully bickering.

The part we looked forward to the most was finally being able to look in each other’s eyes while toasting our cocktails at the Pub. We sat with our friends and drank all night in merriment and I was so thankful to have someone to share in all my dreading of a holiday resulting in so many stories to tell throughout our years together. The Pub was our deep exhale of our families’ ability to deplete our energies. We would sit here and revive and could put it all in check while finally being truest selves.

There was a lot of mingling going on. I had poured my wine and you had a whiskey in hand. I glanced over as you were talking to your dad. I felt distant that day. I didn’t want to be stuck in a conversation with your Aunt or whoever. I walked over to your grandfather, who was so warm to me in his embrace, but I felt lonely, almost like I didn’t belong. I kept waiting for your hand, or your arm around my waist. You had your head down to your phone, sitting on the window sill. I looked over to the kitchen watching your mom, remembering how many times we danced in that kitchen together not knowing it would never happen again. You kept pacing back and forth, drink in one hand, texting with the other. “Band stuff,” you smiled. I got irritated and began crawling in my skin as my spidey sense tapped at me. We barely spoke that day. She had you that day with her digital x’s and o’s. You were distant as we gathered with friends at the Pub that night. Where were you, I thought. The days that would follow were strained and strange, as though we had an inkling of what was to come, yet I was not part of the conversation. We were dancing in separate rooms now and I sensed an unfamiliar downheartedness about you. Where are you? Where am I?

This Thanksgiving marks your 46th birthday. The last time that happened was in 2010, 5 months before the accident and the catalyst of the demise of our union. The last time I saw you was January 2020, and then Covid hit. I had sent several messages with no response and for the first time, I had given up. I have no gratitude. The only thing i was ever thankful for was our partners-in-crime status and now that has become fully extinct, yet the constant echo of the past whispers to me during this exact time, gnawing at me like a child pulling on a mother’s shirt, eagerly, desperately wanting attention.

I will sit at a table barely seating five, as my mom reprimands me about being 2 minutes late after explaining to my Aunt for the upteenth time in Spanish how he doesn’t eat meat while jabbering on how he doesn’t talk. There is no wine, there is no dancing in the kitchen, there are no warm embraces from grandfathers (RiP Papa), and no Granny (RIP) telling us to stop eating cookies before dinner. There are only memories that I wish so very badly I can erase from my temporal lobe. So, what is there to be grateful for? To be grateful for given a second version? To be grateful for the times when I don’t think about the past? To show gratitude for a world that is so fucking annoying and hell-bent on destroying itself? To be gracious about how easily I’ve been to replace in so many situations or how I have become a friend of convenience rather than someone with an ounce of feeling. And then I just think of us in the car:

“She said what?
”She said, she needed to give more gratitude like our friend and then she’ll feel better.”
”Are you serious?”
”Yes, isn’t that hilarious?”
”That’s not going to give her a better life, like be thankful for shit, but this giving gratitude trend is bullshit…”

And then you would look over at me, deeply looking in my eyes, picking my hand up slowly to hold it, and then say, “Baby, I want you to know how grateful I am…” And with a long pause and smirkish smile, “for that boooootay!” We would drive up to the Pub laughing hysterically, giving gratitude for the refuge of drink, friends, and each other.