that last thursday in november

Thanksgiving is a smell. It’s a turkey warmth that creeps out from the kitchen, wanders through the dining room and then drifts up the stairs. It transforms a Thursday afternoon into something more and in our experience it works everywhere. Even in China. Although in China the “American Turkey” that's key to the whole transformation is going to cost you. Something in the neighborhood of $50 for a 14 pounder.

We may have been the only ones on our block watching a turkey transform into a celebration, and our Stovetop stuffing may have come with us in our suitcases back in July, but the day still felt special. It’s also hard to value your family more than when you are so far away that wishing them a Happy Thanksgiving means calling the next day. When I called Chicago the festivities were just beginning, whereas our toasts made in Chengdu to happiness and health, to our adventures and our comforts, and to our families and our friends, were long gone.

So much focus on luck and good fortune ran head-long into my Chinese teacher’s descriptions of growing up in 1960’s China. The country had nothing to eat. Food became anything a body could tolerate so she’d bulked out a haphazard diet with the grasses and leaves her mother had taught her were safe. Today’s most basic foodstuffs were so scarce that kids had raced each other for a single wild strawberry – tiny as a fingernail and cheery red – that popped to life in the schoolyard.

She says today’s young people don’t understand what it was like here before. And we both know that I don’t either. It’s been a while since gaunt figures walking along the side of the road coming to a stop, collapsing, and never getting up was considered run-of-the-mill. Thankfully.

I'm accustomed to focusing on the goodnesses I have collected along my way… the small lucks and big loves that define good fortune. But a glimpse into the list of unfairnesses that have thrashed other people’s lives makes me doubly appreciate my own normal.

I know that’s what everyone says. But we say it because it’s true.