Thanksgiving

For the last few months I've been struggling with a post that I haven't figured out how to write yet. Generally, and without going into too much depth, it's about the future that my kids are inheriting, and how it sure looks much more complicated and challenging than anything I envisioned when I was growing up. A changing environment, the near-total loss of personal privacy, gun violence, terrorism--these issues aren't getting any easier, and they aren't getting resolved anytime soon, either. This is not the world I had hoped to deliver to my kids. It's easy to get depressed, especially for an anxiety-ridden pessimist like myself.

And yet...and yet. I look at all that I have been given, and all that surrounds me, and I am profoundly thankful. My kids are happy, healthy, funny, smart, and well-adjusted. They still scream "Daddy!!" when I come home from work every day. Every day! It doesn't grow old. We have a nice place to live. And even after rent, groceries, daycare and preschool are paid for, we still have some money left over for the occasional movie or trip to the museum. Life is good. Even better--life is comfortable. I try not to complain about not having this, or not being able to do that, because the truth is that we are embarrassingly rich in all aspects of life that matter most to me, and because, at the end of the day, we really have very little to worry about.

Of course giving thanks is different than Thanksgiving, which is really what this post is supposed to be about. So let me turn now to that.

It was our year to stay local, something I am always thankful for because it spares us the late Wednesday evening/early Thursday drive down to NJ with everybody else from New England. Thanksgiving this year was also a celebrity affair, with rockstar Uncle Adam and noted actress Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones!) joining the table. (They attended last year, too, when we were in NJ.) Filling out the roster were Auntie Sarah, Uncle Mike, Baby Jofuss (née Joseph), my parents, and my Aunt Lisa. Unfortunately my grandmother didn't make it, even after I tried to guilt trip her into joining us by invoking my children. She can be a hard nut to crack.

We arrived in Dover around noon and then unleashed the kids on the aunts and uncles, who were all quite happy to goof around with them. Adam, Mike, and I took turns shooting the soccer ball at Andres, who seems to have decided that soccer goalie is his thing, height be damned. He made some good saves. He also kept his cool (and laughed!) when we wildly celebrated after a pass-pass-pass-score series. (This doesn't always happen at home; if I celebrate too much after a goal, no matter how funny I'm trying to be, he turns sullen and won't talk to me.)

The kids eventually went inside, and the adults went for a walk around the neighborhood in anticipation of much eating later. The subject of raccoons came up somehow (I think there's a raccoon family that lives in/on Adam and Krysten's LA apartment), at which time Adam revealed that he has always been haunted by a childhood memory of a rabid raccoon being shot dead in our garage, an event that nobody in the family could verify. We laughed about this for a bit. It seems to have scarred him for life, though.

We came back to the house to find Andres relaxing in front of the football game and his sisters helping to make whipped cream for dessert. This was the lazy Thanksgiving I was looking forward to. Time for some more snacks and football myself while we awaited the main course.

Dinner was served, eventually, and it was fantastic as it always is on Thanksgiving, no matter where we are. Even the kids ate most of the turkey in front of them (hold the veggies though, please). We chased turkey with coffee and dessert, which included little apple flowers that Natalia has grown fond of making (and which I have grown fond of eating) and lots of pie. I talked coffee with the LA power couple, namely the respective merits of the French Press (which Krysten uses), the Aeropress (which Adam swears by), and the good-old-fashioned drip coffee maker (which I use, and which Adam kept referring to dismissively as a "Mr. Coffee"). I may have been convinced to try my French Press again. The Aeropress sounds too ridiculous, which Adam basically confirmed by being unable to keep a straight face as he was describing it.

More football followed dessert. Celia and Andres burned off some calories by doing table-to-chair-to-pillow parkour (yes, they used this term) in the basement, which actually looked like a lot of fun, and seemed like a variant of something that Adam and I would have done years ago. It was nice to see them be each other's best friend for the day. Then, whoops! It was already 8 pm, and the probability of a child meltdown was getting exponentially higher every minute. We packed up and said our goodbyes, just before Lucia transformed herself into a puddle of tears.

Next year in NJ. I'm not sure whether the kids will find a place to do parkour again or whether there will be any celebrities in attendance, but as long as there's turkey and family, I'll be happy.