My first Thanks Giving Day in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanks Giving Day. I went to the grocery store this morning and bought a small turkey (which I hear they didn’t even have here a couple of years ago). I found sweet potatoes, no yams. I made my own bread crumbs for stuffing and found sausage but no oysters. The thing I really missed the most was homemade cranberry sauce (cranberries are a fall fruit and it’s spring time here so there aren’t any). Jimmy most missed pumpkin pie (same issue). Our menu read as follows:
Roast Turkey
Mashed Potatoes
Brussels Sprouts
Sausage Stuffing
Biscuits
Giblet Gravy
Argentine White Wine
Candied Sweet Potatoes
We spoke of our thankfulness,
I am thankful for
A mom who taught me how to cook
A boyfriend who appreciates it
Turkeys in Argentina (no fat on it and the size turkeys get on their own without genetic meddling)
A year of growth and fun and rich experiences
A friend to walk the journey with, hand in hand
28th of November, 1 Year Anniversary of the Day Jimmy and I First Met
We slept late this morning and woke up to a fridge full of Thanksgiving day leftovers, but decided to have toast and yogurt for breakfast. Jimmy’s first words this morning reminded me that it is another special day. Today is the one year anniversary of the day we met. What a year it has been.
It is hard to hold on to the holidays here. It isn’t the warmth, because I’ve lived in Southern California all of my adult life and have seen 85 degree Christmas days before. It might be the days being so long or the lack of close people to gather with or the missing foods or something else, maybe all of the these. I notice that holidays are always strange when you don’t have a real home to live in. Taking out your own ornaments and cooking the things you know and love are the tactile and olfactory triggers that let you know the holidays are here. This new experience will give us new ways of looking at this season and no matter where we are in the years to come we’ll always have this memory of our first holiday season together here in South America in a rented apartment on the other side of the world.
To celebrate our anniversary we went to the movies. An afternoon movie with my best friend would have been gift enough but some time in the weeks before our anniversary Jimmy snuck off and had a special gift customized for me in a local store. How he managed that in his steadily improving but still somewhat spotty Spanish is a funny story and a testament to his ingenuity and his determination. He gave me my gift while I soaked in the tiny bathtub here in our temporary apartment. I remember the first time I saw the bathtub and thought it looked like something built for a child. Somehow in the months since I’ve gotten so used to it I hardly notice it’s small any more. What a luxury a normal sized tub will be. A soak in a tub full of hot water is a joy and a comfort that costs almost nothing and leaves me feeling grounded. Somehow it brings me back to myself.
Outside of the bathtub Jimmy and I have had some serious conversations lately and we had some today as well. The world is changing and our plans are changing with it. We are working everyday and doing work that is meaningful for us. The direction of that work is changing. Time will tell what direction the work and the changes will take us in, but for now it is comforting to have meaningful work that calls to us.
All in all it was a good two days, our first two celebrations here in Baires. During the next couple of months we’ll see Christmas, my son’s birthday, New Year’s Eve and Jimmy’s birthday go by. We will make each of these days special in the private, simple and quiet way that is becoming our habit here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment