Canadian Thanksgiving

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. 

A day I haven't given a lot of thought to since 1997 when we celebrated our last Thanksgiving in October and switched to celebrating during November with the rest of the U.S. But this year my parents and one of my sisters are in Canada and celebrating their first October Thanksgiving in 23 years and they're doing it without me.

And I'll be having Thanksgiving here without them. It'll only be the second one where I haven't been with my family. The first one was a few years ago when I decided to stay in Texas and was lucky enough to have a good friend invite me to her family's. While I had a great time with them, everyone ate the cheesecake I brought because I make amazing cheesecake, I wished at the time that I went home. Mostly because the town that shall not be named had their own lame ass parade that they aired live that morning instead of airing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade which I still think should be illegal. I don't want to see the guy that works at my bank try to rope a horse, I want to see Broadway and big huge balloons and whoever's working on the Today Show that year. I want to watch the Dog Show! I did not want local color, I wanted New York. I wanted to go home.

And I wish I could go home now. Even though I haven't stepped foot in Canada since the early 2000's if my family is there, it's home.

So I've been trying to focus on the good things about having my own Thanksgiving. 

I love to cook and I'll finally be able to do the big show and cook for Thanksgiving. My Mom has a routine and she doesn't need anyone's help. Even if she wanted it, she doesn't have time for it. She knows what she's doing and has it timed perfectly. One year she had to work and my Dad cooked and we ended up eating at 3 in the afternoon because "everything's ready now!" So making my own menu, which will essentially be what my Mom makes, and trying to figure out when to make things so they're done on time, and being responsible for recreating one of my favorite days, which revolves around food and relaxing and day drinking, is exciting to me and I am looking forward to that.

But I had this idea that I'd host a Friendsgiving this year. I didn't have anything concretely planned because it was a fleeting thought I had last year knowing my family wouldn't be here this time this year. I thought I could have an open house earlier in the week or the weekend before and just make a bunch of food and have holiday movies on and have people come whenever they wanted to to say hi and play games and distract me from feeling so alone. But that's obviously not going to happen this year because of the pandemic. I can't say I'm not disappointed.

I've been starting to think about Thanksgiving lately but I realized it was Canadian Thanksgiving last night  when my sister asked in a group text how the family was going to celebrate and I lost it a bit. So I texted two of my best pals and they dropped whatever they were doing to have a chat for a few hours. It definitely took my mind off of it for a while.

So even though I'm not with my family and it's not Thanksgiving here yet, I still have a lot to be thankful for.