A Shanghai Thanksgiving

Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world, belts are bursting and tryptophan is just starting to catalyze the telltale food coma of a good turkey dinner.  Football is on television, family and friends are home for the long weekend, and everything is as it should be for one of the favorite American holidays of the year.  It's Thanksgiving night in America.

There are those who simply live for Thanksgiving.  They gather their nuclear and extended families in force for huge cookouts in the backyard, preceeded by friendly (or not-so-friendly) touch football games, and succeeded by watching the pros do it on television.  They cook and cook (and cook), and put more effort into the production and joy of Thanksgiving than any other day of the year.  And while I completely understand why, I am not one of those people.  I love Thanksgiving, but I'm not sure I would have ever classified myself as one of those people for whom a calendar year is simply the fourth Thursday of November...and 364 days that aren't Thanksgiving.  For me, it's always been about two things: my family (we tended to keep things small: Mom, Dad, Noah, and the grandparents), and more recently, my tight circle of friends, for whom Thanksgiving represented perhaps the only time of year when we would all descend back on New York City at the same time.

It's simpler than that, though.  I realize now that the value of Thanksgiving can be described in one word: home.  This marks the first Thanksgiving in my twenty-five years of life that I have not spent at home.  This is also true for many of my newly made American friends in Shanghai.  And even for the grizzled veterans, who have been abroad for several years, it seems the idea of Thanksgiving away from home never becomes normal.

Rather than wallow in the homesickness that naturally comes with spending Thanksgiving in Shanghai, 30 expats got together for a potluck Thanksgiving supper last night.  I was very lucky to be one of them.  It was hosted by four teacher colleagues of my roommate Franco, all of whom I had met several times before and would, at this point, count them as my own friends too.  You could tell from the slightly detached look in most of the guests' eyes that everyone was missing home at least a little bit.  So we focused instead on each other, and, of course, on food: there was turkey, and gravy, and several varieites of stuffing, sweet carrots, and pasta salad, macaroni and cheese, and fried mac n cheese balls (made by me and Franco), sweet potato mash, all sorts of delicious desserts, and more.  One girl pointed out that the food last night was miles better than anything her family ever made at Thanksgiving.  (Mom -- I can confidently say the same was NOT true for me, so don't get your knickers in a twist).

After eating our fill, the hosts called everyone into their spacious living room.  They graciously thanked all of us for coming, and asked that we go around the room and say briefly what we were thankful for.  The responses were heartfelt, honest, and open.  Some of them hilarious and some of them moving, almost all of them were driven by love.  That love manifested itself in an outpouring of appreciation for our friends in Shanghai, many of whom were sitting together in that living room last night, but it also extended away, in myriad directions, to the Thanksgiving dinners everyone knew they were missing.  Everyone, it seemed, felt they were exactly where they needed to be last night, while simultaneously wishing they could also be at home with their families.  It was powerful and it was real, and perhaps one of the more memorable Thanksgivings of my life despite not spending it with the people I love the most.  On a cold, rainy night in Shanghai, 30 people who chose to leave home created, together, a temporary home, and gave thanks for the collective fortune that allowed us to do so.

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I promise there's still more coming from the Vietnam trip; I just haven't had time to sort through the pictures.  This weekend, for sure.