Other than my birthday, (which, who am I kidding, is not a holiday celebrated by millions of people) Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. For many, it’s dreadful to sit around a table with boring or annoying relatives they only see once a year to be asked questions which they don’t know the answers to either, whether it’s in regards to their employment or relationship status. In this respect, Thanksgiving is overlooked as the far more mediocre preceding holiday to Hanukkah or Christmas. In 2020, this Thanksgiving slander has only increased since, for many, it was spent without relatives or without the same large dinner table gatherings––only emphasizing how different this year has been. I admit I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving this year with my immediate family—just my brother and my parents.
Thursday would start early in the beauteous town of Newport with (at least to me) a dreaded 5k Pie Run—which I would spend walking in the back and only running with the finish line in sight—and transcend into a day of “troll hunting” at the local forts, hiking through the wilderness surrounding Fort Wetherill, and sometimes finding a stray dog or two. At the dinner table, everyone would have name tags, including all the dogs, which us cousins would have the power to arrange and rearrange as we created the perfect Thanksgiving seating chart, making sure to change it up every year, of course.
Dinner would wrap up with a walk through Jamestown, playing games of ninja and singing in the streets. We would come back to the warmth of the indoors to find desserts waiting and a twenty-person game of Balderdash waiting for us. We would go to sleep with full stomachs and hearts, and wake the next day to hours of family foosball tournaments, endless games of Clue and Mao, homemade guacamole, and laughing so much our stomachs hurt.
Thanksgiving, for me, has always been about love. So much love, our hearts pour out with its surplus. I look forward to it every day of the year because of all the fun traditions and crazy laughter waiting for me. So, of course, I was devastated that none of those festivities would be happening this year. It would be another long year or more without seeing that side of my family—of course, for good reason. It is necessary to protect each other in the midst of the pandemic. We all knew that, and yet, all the games and laughter would be missed.
2020, if nothing else, has made me realize how thankful I am for what I do have in my life. Though we all spent what felt like too many days in our childhood bedrooms, I was grateful for that time with my immediate family, and on Thanksgiving, I was thankful for having a love for my extended family so strong that even the boundaries of Zoom could not disrupt. I am hopeful that next year we will be together again, in that small town of Jamestown, Rhode Island, hugging each other over a game of Balderdash and watching old family videos that now make me weep with nostalgia and love. Hope is a wonderful thing.
For now, this—making the effort to stay connected in each other’s lives and playing virtual games—is enough. It is more than enough, and I am so grateful for all of it.
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