Thanks and Stuff

I won't be posting anything tomorrow because I will be eating. When I stop eating, I'll start eating. After that, I'll probably go someplace to eat. Eating might follow that but it's a pretty loose plan so you never know what I could do. Hell, I could actually end up eating.

Because I'll be very busy tomorrow, I'm going to post something about Thanksgiving today. Specifically, I'm going to copy and paste an article I wrote earlier this week. It will free up my time so I can eat some more.

Belated Thanks

The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked in my mother's office to earn money for my freshman year of college.

We went to lunch together quite a bit, frequenting this a la carte Mexican restaurant near the office. "I know that when you leave, you're never going to live here again," she said one day. Chomping on a burrito larger than my head, I was at a loss for words.

Us last year before I performed Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me" at karaoke night and reminded her why she's glad we live far, far away from each other. (It's the embarrassment, if you're wondering. All the embarrassment.) 

I knew she was right. Since I was a child, I've been dreaming of the future. Specifically, I've been dreaming of a future far away from Texarkana, where most of my immediate family lives. Even in high school, I knew I wanted to be independent as soon as I could be. I wanted to move off. I wanted to make a living writing. I wanted to control my finances and personal choices as much as I could without interference from my family.

Today, I get paid to write and I live almost six hours away from my mother. After all that wishing and ruminating on the future, I have accomplished nearly everything I wanted to accomplish at this point in my life. This year will  be my first Thanksgiving as a mostly independent career woman - which I will be spending with my boyfriend's family in Fayetteville. Five years ago, I probably would have celebrated this moment with too much wine just because I could.

But now that I have everything I always wanted, I really hate that I have to go months at a time without seeing my mom and nana. I miss them so very much, and the thought of spending a holiday without them saddens me more than I could express in words and more than I ever thought it would.

This year, I won't get to eat my nana's special dressing, featuring celery and onions ground up so finely that you wouldn't even know they were in there. I hated celery and onions as a child - today, I have learned to tolerate them - and my nana altered her dressing recipe to fool me into eating it. She also made me a separate banana pudding sans banana, which is really just hot vanilla pudding and wafer cookies. She spoiled me and I'm not sure if I'm ready to live in a world where people expect me to eat your run-of-the-mill dressing and banana pudding.

Aside from that, I miss the camaraderie. I've come to understand - and even share - my mother's sense of humor and sense of responsibility over the past few years. In high school, I thought she was being judgmental when she criticized me for wearing a too-short skirt or for being more crass than I should have been. Now, I know she was just trying to prepare me for a world hyper-focused on first impressions and appearances. It often felt like she was trying to hold me back, but I know now that she was doing her best to help me achieve the professional success I always talked about.

It's really painful to realize all my mother has done to help me now that I can't see her every day. I miss our dinners. I miss our late night television binges. I even miss waking up super early on Saturdays to go window shopping and grab brunch.

Still, I'm very lucky to have the support I do from my mother. I may not be able to see her this Thanksgiving, but I am more thankful for her help and love than anything else. Yes, even more than my career and the independence I always longed for. After all, she's the reason I have everything I do.

This year, I'm more thankful than I've ever been. My heart is filled with love - love for my family, for my boyfriend's family and for all the friends I keep close despite the distance between us. I love my career, too, but I'm realizing that it will always take a back seat to the people who constantly enrich my life. More importantly, I'm realizing that this is the way it should be. And, yes, I'm very thankful for that.