Thanksgiving in Christmas-town.
I didn't see any snow until I hit Utica. It was like all of the sudden winter happened around me without warning. I was driving 35 in a 55 for the majority of my time on Route 12 which was like crossing a desert alone.
I was dreading the holiday.
The dry turkey, the inevitable use of styrofoam plates, the smell of my brother's dogs, the arguing, my bedroom, the snow and the fact that for the first time in my life... it's thanksgiving and my grandfather is gone.
It wasn't as bad as I had anticipated but now that I'm here in my room, sitting in the bed I've had since I was about 4, I really feel the emptiness.
I'm in a room which makes me feel completely immersed in myself. It's like an odd time capsule that I open once or twice a year only to find that every time I look at the same things I come out feeling something different. I couldn't possibly be more cliche for quoting Thomas Wofle here but... "he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began."
Its how I feel.
I can't help that he wrote it first.
We ate on folding tables today with styrofoam plates and cups. And not just any styrofoam plates... these plates were divided so that you had not one, but five different designated areas on the plate where you could choose to put your mashed potatoes. I sat in a folding chair that buckled under my weight and after dinner I sat down in a rocking chair that was covered in bear skin and watched the first five minutes of a christmas story. Later, we went to my grandmother's house and ate dessert off of styrofoam and all I could think about was how it was bad for the environment. My little cousin kept sitting in the chair where my grandfather died. Most of us pretended that the chair wasn't there. I saw everyone glance at it from time to time but for the most part we treated it as a ghost; we let it watch, we felt it but we pretended it wasn't real and that it wasn't haunting us.
Afterwards my aunt and uncle played guitar in the living room like we usually do at christmas. But instead of christmas songs or thanksgiving songs (which I don't think exist), they played songs that they wrote about grandpa. My grandma stayed in another room. What was cathartic for them was too painful for her.
I've never been more acutely aware of how country my family is until I realized that I've reached a point where their accents are hard for me to understand.
And I'm also desperately hoping that I never had one.
This room really freaks me out.
Like I don't know who's bed I'm sleeping in.
I was dreading the holiday.
The dry turkey, the inevitable use of styrofoam plates, the smell of my brother's dogs, the arguing, my bedroom, the snow and the fact that for the first time in my life... it's thanksgiving and my grandfather is gone.
It wasn't as bad as I had anticipated but now that I'm here in my room, sitting in the bed I've had since I was about 4, I really feel the emptiness.
I'm in a room which makes me feel completely immersed in myself. It's like an odd time capsule that I open once or twice a year only to find that every time I look at the same things I come out feeling something different. I couldn't possibly be more cliche for quoting Thomas Wofle here but... "he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began."
Its how I feel.
I can't help that he wrote it first.
We ate on folding tables today with styrofoam plates and cups. And not just any styrofoam plates... these plates were divided so that you had not one, but five different designated areas on the plate where you could choose to put your mashed potatoes. I sat in a folding chair that buckled under my weight and after dinner I sat down in a rocking chair that was covered in bear skin and watched the first five minutes of a christmas story. Later, we went to my grandmother's house and ate dessert off of styrofoam and all I could think about was how it was bad for the environment. My little cousin kept sitting in the chair where my grandfather died. Most of us pretended that the chair wasn't there. I saw everyone glance at it from time to time but for the most part we treated it as a ghost; we let it watch, we felt it but we pretended it wasn't real and that it wasn't haunting us.
Afterwards my aunt and uncle played guitar in the living room like we usually do at christmas. But instead of christmas songs or thanksgiving songs (which I don't think exist), they played songs that they wrote about grandpa. My grandma stayed in another room. What was cathartic for them was too painful for her.
I've never been more acutely aware of how country my family is until I realized that I've reached a point where their accents are hard for me to understand.
And I'm also desperately hoping that I never had one.
This room really freaks me out.
Like I don't know who's bed I'm sleeping in.