(thanks)giving

It is great to be home: the kitchen and the TV room right next to it have been warm for several hours while it's cold and raining outside. My mom and my sister are taking the turkey out of the oven and it smells incredibly good. I have been playing around with Atkins for the past weeks, but I don't care: it is all about stuffing and pumpkin pie tonight, along with an excellent Muga and patxaran over a couple of ice cubes. The best of two worlds this evening: the traditional turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, steamed veggies and cranberry jelly, getting along with red wine and sloe liqueur from the north of Spain.

I grew up in Mexico, and even though my family and I lived in a bordertown for almost thirty years, we were never tempted to celebrate a non-Mexican holiday like many of our neighbors and classmates. That is the reason why I never got to fully understand the meaning of Thanksgiving Day.

But the past years have been very different: my sister married a great South Dakotan, my family moved to this country and I ended up here as well after my, let's call it, sabbatical in Euskadi and Catalonia, and Thanksgiving is now a staple at home for the past eight years. And it's been after these years that I've come to understand the idea of having a day to give "thanks" and remember those pilgrims who after horrible days and times managed to have a meal and say Thanks to God. Or so we read.

It is basically like Mother's Day and Father's Day or even Valentine's Day: we have a last chance to acknowledge someone --or in this case, Someone-- after we fuck up by forgetting to do so the rest of the year. It is easier this way: we have a set day to tell them what great mothers and fathers and lovers and friends they are, and Hallmark and American Greetings get richer and richer from selling printed paper with witty and corny remarks.

We should understand Thanksgiving Day as every day we live. It doesn't matter if you give thanks to a superior being or not, but be grateful for what you have every day. Then, the turkey and the fixings and the wine and the liqueur will become a great reward to us instead.

But since I am talking about being grateful and giving thanks, here are a few of things I am grateful for: my family, my friends, my job, the house where I live, the car that I drive, los diez décimos porque ya nos toca, my good luck, my good health, my good opportunities. Also, I am grateful to: DIosito, my dad and my tía Ceci.

It is great to be home, and mostly, to be away from work. Oh, yes.

THANKS!