Thursday was the first time in my life I’ve ever missed Thanksgiving with my family. Over the past decade it’s been hit or miss which of my siblings would be there, but I always made it, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s the holiday where my family all goes somewhere together, somewhere away from TV (mostly) and internet. Where we hang out, play games, sing together, run around exploring wherever we are—woods or beach or fields. And of course where we eat together and enjoy all our untraditional traditions.
I expected Thanksgiving to be hard. What I didn’t expect was that today (Sunday) would actually be harder. Thursday was mostly a normal day. I spent all day in a workshop at work. We came home and had leftover turkey from our earlier celebration. (When everyday life continues on a holiday you end up with different groups of people choosing different days to celebrate. We’ve really had Thanksgiving dinner 4 times now. More turkey and stuffing than I’ve ever had in my life.)
In an expat community everyone puts in whatever extra effort is necessary to make the holiday as home-like as possible. All of the traditional foods that are so hard to come by here are suddenly worth the effort (and expense), even if you have to have someone send it to you from the States. And since no one has family around we all invite each other, to celebrate together and introduce all our friends from other countries to our cultural celebration.
We sang together (in multiple languages even), we played games (though less than we wanted), we ate all the pecan and pumpkin pies and drank warm drinks together. We laughed and enjoyed each other’s company, and especially introducing all the dishes to our non-American friends.
But no matter how close you come to matching the traditions, it doesn’t match being with your family. Especially when it’s one of the few times a year when they’re pretty much all together, and you’re not there.
Today was harder because I knew they were all headed home, back there, almost 7,000 miles away. They were all dispersing back to their regular lives, and I hadn’t even managed to get in a Skype convo with all of them together because of schedules and time differences. Because I had officially missed the Thanksgiving that has nothing to do with the day, but with the togetherness.
Today I love the fact that I celebrated Thanksgiving with four different groups of people, and enjoyed all of them. That we’re making friends here, getting to know people and have a sense of community again. I love the fact that there were hymns sung in at least 6 different languages. That we got to be part of introducing people to a uniquely American tradition. But I’m also more sure than ever that this holiday is special to me because of the people I have always spent it with. And they feel very far away today.