thanksgiving restrospective

this picture was taking on thanksgiving morning at my new home, The Sassy Shack. After my roomies, Paula and Naomi, and I realized we were all wearing blue hoodies, we decided to take a few pictures.

A Decade of Thanksgivings

1998: Sioux Falls, SD

I don't remember much, okay anything, about this Thanksgiving. To be honest, I am not even 100% sure that I was in Sioux Falls. There is a slight chance that my family and I drove up to St. Cloud, Mn to spend the weekend with my mom's niece and her family. All I know is that this was the last Thanksgiving I spent with my mother, father and brother to date. I was 17 years old and a senior in high school.

1999: Whittier, Ca

I was a freshman in college at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I drove down to So-Cal with one of my crazy roommates. I spent the weekend at my Aunt Amy's house in Whittier. I was stoned for most of the weekend. I remember eating lots of food and listening to Radiohead on my Discman. I went to Hollywood one evening with my cousin Teo, his girlfriend Valerie and their friend Johnny Socko. We ended up going to several different clubs and getting really drunk. The details are a bit blurry, but I do have a vague recollection of being in the backseat with Johnny at the end of the night and having to tell him to leave me alone. My cousin and his girlfriend were in the front seat and didn't really do much to acknowledge the situation.

My aunt sent me off with a few joints. I had a really awkward ride with my uncle to meet my housemate. He is a man of few words. I don't think we exchanged more than a few sentences during the hour plus drive. This probably would not have been such a big deal if I wasn't stoned and super self-conscious. On the drive back to Santa Cruz, my housemate and I were in stop and go traffic for several hours. I convinced her to let me stick my head out the car window and take a few puffs off of one of the joints that my aunt gave me.

2000 Whittier, Ca

My friend and housemate Lauren flew down together. Lauren is terrified of flying and I had her nails digging into my arm for the entire flight. My uncle Tim picked me up at the airport. On the way to my aunt's house, we talked about politics. George Bush had just been elected. I think I said something about not seeing a huge difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. I didn't have much to back up this statement, except for that I was a second year college student surrounded by radicals and trying to figure out my own beliefs. 

My cousin invited me to go out with him and his friends again, this time I said no. I stayed at Lauren's family's apartment in L.A. the night before we flew home. We ate sushi and hung out on the roof of her apartment building. Although we didn't start hooking up until a few months later, there was still quite a bit of sexual tension between us at this time.

2001 Palo Alto, Ca

I decided not to go down to So-Cal this year. Instead I spent the day with my friend and housemate Julia (pronounced Hoo-lia) and her family. They made tamales. I interviewed her mother for my Spanish class. Hoolia got really embarrassed because her family talked lots about pets they had buried during dinner. I thought it was hilarious. I decided to drive back to Santa Cruz that evening. I had the house to myself. The heat kept coming on and made the shutters to the sliding glass door make all sorts of noise. I got kind of spooked out and had a hard time falling asleep.

2002 New York, NY

My friend Sarah and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. We were both in New York doing internships for school. We had lucked out and found an amazing space in a central part of town, right above a subway stop even. The only downfall was that her bedroom doubled as the living room. 

We had all gone out the night before. I was sharing a bed with Jeff, a friend visiting from California. Sarah was sharing her bed with Neil, another visiting Californian. Sarah was working at this Internet cafe in the East Village. She always had to work long hours and was only getting paid $5 dollars an hour under the table. She was supposed to be at work at 6am. She kept hitting the snooze button on her alarm, which meant the radio went off every 5 minutes, blaring booty jams. Along with this, the unpredictable radiators kept turning on and off, making lots of noise and spewing hot water.

All of this made it hard to sleep. We got up fairly early and decided to make french toast. Jeff stayed behind to try and get some more rest. Neil and I navigated our way around the huge supermarket by our place, which was quite bumpin' on the morning of Thanksgiving. We had decided to order some pot through a delivery service (very new york). When we got back from our shopping adventure, this guy showed up to deliver the goods. We were still making breakfast. He sold us an eighth of weed in a plastic container with Bob Marley stickers on it for $100. We offered him some french toast, he politely declined. 

In the afternoon, we took the subway over to Devlin's grandma's house. Grandma had other plans for the day so we had to apartment (and the very small but well stocked kitchen) all to ourselves. We spent the next several hours drinking mate and preparing our Mexican-inspired Thanksgiving feast, which included beans and rice and roasted vegetable and mashed potato enchiladas.

A few friends came over. Mostly folks that we knew from California. And my Australian co-worker, Illie. She was a little drunk when she arrived and was taken aback by how "civilized" my friends were. I think she was surprised we weren't all wasted and was a bit embarrassed for showing up drunk. 

We ate and played dominoes. I remember at one point saying that I had no idea where I would be living in a year. That felt scary and exciting.

2003 Portland, Or

I had just moved to town a little over a month ago. I was living in a house in Northeast Portland with several friends from South Dakota and a guy named Joe. We had decided to have a vegan thanksgiving. Unfortunately Morgan had gotten really drunk the night before, and she was the main one planning the feast and I think she was too hungover to enjoy it. We had other South Dakotans come down from Seattle and up from California. Our friend Dave missed his flight. Somehow he managed to get a ride to the bay area and our friends drove down to get him. I had just adopted a cat, Mister Sister. He spent most of the day being freaked out and hiding under the bed in Ian's room. I remember laughing a lot with Kim and her friend. 

2004 Pichilemu, Chile

I had been traveling with Sarah and Breagan for a little over a month. We ended up in Pichilemu, a small beach town south of Santiago, because we wanted to go surfing. We had had our first lessons with Elvis, the Chilean surfing instructor, the day before. We had gone out to dinner that night. Sarah and I had ordered the same thing, which ended up being super cheesy. Sarah had diarrhea most of the next. She opted out of going surfing that morning. 

That evening we went out to a different restaurant. It felt like after being together for a month straight, we didn't have much to say to each other. I think we were all feeling a little homesick. I was also concerned about my health because I hadn't had a good bowel movement in over week. I would head to Santiago to seek medical assistance a couple days later.

2005 Portland, Or

I was living at a house called the Squirrel Ship. My housemates and I had invited a few folks over for dinner. I made squash soup. My friend Rachel who had just moved to town came over late and I was kind of upset/disappointed. Frannie came over later on with pumpkin bread. We played line picture line picture. I am pretty sure Finn and Morgan were there too.

2006 Portland, Or

I was getting ready to move out of the Squirrel Ship. We had another feast. This time Frannie was living in the house. Our friend Kari came over with a lentil loaf, stuffing and at least one pie. I made butternut squash and millet cakes as well as a baked acorn squash and apple dish. Tuesday was there. So was Chelsea. Chane came over later. It was cold and we walked around on the front porch. We played Apples to Apples.

2007 Olympia, Wa

My original plan was to spend the day at my friend Finn's house. But then Frannie had received an invitation to a Spanksgiving extravaganza in Olympia. I had had a difficult couple months and decided that getting out of town would be really good for me. This caused some ripples in my relationship with Finn but we have managed to work through it.

We left for Olympia on Thursday afternoon. I hadn't seen much of Frannie lately and we had a nice talk on the way up. About mental health. About making (and not making) decisions. When we arrived one of the first people we ran into was a mutual friend from Seattle. There were lots of people there and the majority of them were drinking alcohol. 

The feast was delicious and we did a go around before we ate. We all said our name, where we were from, what dishes we brought and what animal we were most like. I said I was like a bear, or a whale. The evening was a bit debaucherous. Some people were wasted by dinnertime. We never even got to dessert that evening. Later we had an impromptu dance party and I read a children's book with a group of people before going to bed.

2008 Portland, Or

This year my new housemates and I decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner at our house. It also doubled as our housewarming party, since 3 out of 5 people have moved in in just the past couple months. We spent all day preparing food and listening to music. I took a lot of pictures. We paused from preparing to conduct a ritual for the new moon at 11:55am. We all wrote down wishes for the next month. We chose one to read aloud and then burn. I smudged everyone with sweetbrush. We held hands and hugged. It was special.

Everyone came over around 4. It was a little overwhelming to have so many people show up at once. We were almost able to fit everyone at the table. We did a go around where everyone said there name and one thing they were grateful for. We also acknowledged that the original Thanksgiving was based on genocide, colonization and appropriation, and that we want to recognize that while also acknowledging that we are re-creating this day for ourselves.

After dinner we played line picture line picture and celebrity password. At the end of the evening we ended up cleaning up the house so well you could barely tell we had hosted a gigantic feast. After everyone left, Naomi and I put in Harold and Maude but she started falling asleep so we turned it off. It was an epic and delightful day. Perhaps the best Thanksgiving yet..