Dia de Dar Gracias

Today's Thanksgiving turned out to be much better than I had expected it to be. I was originally planning to try to leave the country because I was afraid that if I was around here for the holiday it would throw me into some spiral of deep depression. Unfortunately, the fact that I was fighting a cold and had a couple of other obligations around town forced me to stay planted at home and left me to face the two-fronted attack of being alone on the holidays coupled with seasonal angst and ennui. Fortunately, I was armed with a good game plan.

I woke up early this morning and immediately began baking. By 10 am I had made 4 pies. My spirits were lifted by the creation of these delicious confections, and also by the fact that it was chilly enough outside to actually make it feel like fall. I put on my favorite hoodie (which I thought I would never need down here) and proceeded to walk around the neighborhood. It was nice to be able to pop into two different houses and smell them baking two separate (but equally huge) turkeys for our feast later in the day. I spent the rest of the day busying myself with other minor food preparation events, and by 3 o'clock all of the white people left in the Rio Grande Valley started to converge upon Mark's house for dinner. There was enough food there to feed at least 40 people, and since there were only 20 of us, we were all incredibly happy. Generally speaking, it was all pretty delicious. The only thing that I was disappointed about was the sweet potatoes. Someone tried to make them healthy instead of with butter and marshmallows, and I thought that was particularly lame and inconsiderate on this holiday...but oh well.

The conversation at dinner (of course) turned to teaching horror stories--with each one of us trying to outdo the others in the scale of horrible things that have happened to us since we got down here. We went from category to category--starting with gang activity, followed by sexual activity, drug activity, violent activity, and then ending with just plain funny stories of kids not working. I guess these are sort of stereotypical stories given our current living and working choices...I mean, I can't get over the fact that these are the types of stories that people will expect us to tell when we come home for the holidays, but that is a random tangent that I don't want to follow at this time.

After dinner I was stuffed and it was starting to get hot inside the house, so I suggested to a couple of friends that we go outside and lay in the grass. It was so cool outside that we had to come back in to get a quilt, and I imagine that we 4 girls must have looked quite goofy lying together on the front lawn, tightly packed underneath a twin-sized quilt, but we were enjoying digesting our food in the cool air. After a while a few of the guys came outside to play Frisbee, which made our relaxing time slightly more dangerous as we were constantly dodging flying disks coming at us from all angles.

To top the evening off, a bunch of us went to see No Country For Old Men, which was uncomfortable, creepy, tense, violent, and beautiful. Those Coen brothers know how to tell stories all right. There were a couple of scenes at the US-Mexico border that were especially poignant for those of us living at the US-Mexico border.

So I guess all of that is that setting and what follows is the conclusion. I was worried that today would make me realize how alone I am and make me want to run away and never return. And actually, it made me feel similar to that, yet in an importantly distinguishable way. I realized that I am never truly alone; I am surrounded by a good bunch of people that are going through a similar experience that I am going through. I also realize that this common experience is a hard one for all of us. For me, it's like taking the hardest thing I had ever done in the past, putting that thing on steroids, having it speak another language and culture, and then locking me in a small cage with it while I try to make it succumb to my fleeting intellectual prowess. Of course it is going to be ugly. I don't know what else I was expecting.

I am also beginning to understand something else about myself. For the past few years I have had the habit of floating around quite a bit. I don't know exactly what I have been looking for. I think in part I am just looking to see the world, in part I have issues staying in one place and getting too close to people, in part I am looking for a good story to tell, and in part I am looking to give my life some meaning. However, I also think that I was under the impression that in Colorado people are narrow-minded and all think the same way--and I was looking for some mythical land where every person thinks in different ways and sits around and talks about it in cafes or something. I thought that this sort of intellectual conversation in coffee shops was what life was all about. But now I am coming to realize that although the chatter varies from place to place...if you stay in one place it is all pretty much the same. And on top of that--the chatter isn't really all that important anyway. What is important is the places, people, and things that the chatter is all about. And by putting myself in a place where I am in constant pursuit of the "intellectual buzz," I have missed what the buzz is all about.

Now, all of that is a sort of roundabout way of saying that I am ready to come home now. And by that I don't mean that I am ready to leave the Rio Grande Valley. You see, before when I was in Boston or in New Zealand or really just about anywhere else, I was always ready to leave. I was never really comfortable where I was. But that doesn't mean that I was ready to go home. I never wanted to go back to Colorado. I thought going back meant admitting that I was a boring and lame person. So I was always ready to leave to someplace new, but never ready to return to the place where I am from. I wanted to be different than all of the people I grew up with. I wanted to have a more interesting, more important life. Yes, it was very egotistical of me. But now I feel a little wiser and a lot humbler, and I am ready to come home. I am ready to find an apartment somewhere in the suburbs and be happy there. I am ready to live in one of those "little boxes" I disdained so openly. I realize that I could travel around the globe, but until I can be comfortable with myself at home, I won't be comfortable living any place else either.

Anyway, if you are still reading this I commend you. Thanks for bearing with me. Happy Thanksgiving.