Thanksgiving '84
Dec. 25th, 2006 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eorBy request from Looks to Alaska and perhaps a timely response to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mizzmarvel. I had intended to write this one closer to Thanksgiving, but life got busy and complicated and I haven't been in a writing mood.
Life is a strange interconnected thing with many causes and effects woven together like a bowl of spaghetti. Perspective and memory both tend to distort. Forgive the distortions of memory, perspective, and storytelling.
My family accumulates holiday traditions like redneck families accumulate junk cars. Thanksgivings of my youth involved a large adult table and one or more kids' tables. The largest of which involved a whole pig, which didn't quite fit in the oven, and a goose as main dishes. Yes, I was used to family holidays.
I knew that Thanksgiving of 1984 was going to be different. I think in the late summer I had some vague idea of a holiday with the girlfriend's family. But I didn't really think about it, holiday's just happened in my experience.
When fall came I had a close encounter with a brick wall (we're talking figuratively here, not literally). Thanksgiving with the girlfriend's family was out because the girlfriend was out. A flight from Boston to Florida was out of the question. Even if the last of my funds hadn't been spent in fits of manic-depressive splendor, my mom would never see the justification in such an expenditure when I was scheduled to come home in another month anyway. Plus, if she got wind of where my grades were there'd be an ice storm in Florida when I landed. Yeah, my grades were what you'd expect from someone who had too good a time early on and a breakdown a bit later. My average in Chemistry was around 13%, Physics was somewhere in the single digits, the others were a scattering of higher failing grades.
Emotionally, financially, and academically I had reached the end of my rope, my arms were getting tired, and my feet were dangling over the abyss.
What to do? The only thing I could, I would spend the holiday week at school. Everyone I knew would be going home for the week so there would be no distractions and I could study.
So I did. I sat at my desk alternating from one book to the next, watching the campus slowly empty outside my window. I got up early, studied, drank tea, and studied more. By Wednesday there was one other person left on my floor and he was leaving.
Thanksgiving morning I got up early, dressed as warmly as I could, and rode my bike down to the bus station. The weather was crispy cold, biting through gloves and hat easily, but my core stayed warm with the exertion. I bought myself and my bike a ticket to The Cape and caught the next bus down. I'd ridden this bus many times in the last six months, but for different reasons. She lived there. Whether I was doing it as a self-destructive desire to rub a ton of salt into my wounds or to prove to myself I would live I don't know, but either way that's where I was going.
The weather at my destination wasn't any warmer. The wind between the houses and trees felt a lot like the wind between the skyscrapers. As the bus pulled away I saddled up and hunched over the handlebars against the cold. I rode on the deserted roads, alternately pushing until my lungs burned and my face iced or slowing so the sweat chilled. I rode all around the area, but did not go to that house.
Cold clear weather. Lungs burning. The stark beauty of Fall. Hands going numb on the handlebars. An emptiness wrapped in emptiness.
When I had rode all I could ride and felt all I could feel, I turned back to the bus station. The bus was warm and the rhythm a strange diesel meditation. Back in Boston I exited onto familiar roads strangely quiet. I rode back to school arriving a little before sundown.
There was only one cafeteria open. I made my way down to it for supper. There were three people working the counter and one other person in the dining area. It was warm and quiet.
I went back up to my dorm room, settled in with my tea and my work. It had been a good day.
"Just being alive,
it can really hurt sometimes.
These moments given,
are a gift from time." Kate Bush "Moments of Pleasure"
Oh, how did it turn out you ask? Well, most of the stories that are based on real life don't have an end, but this one has closure in parts.
I left campus for good the following month at the end of term. Thanks to my work beginning on Thanksgiving week, I raised my Chemistry grade into the mid 70's and my Physics grade came up high enough so I didn't fail. The remainder of my grades were A's and B's. I chose not to return, instead enrolling in a community college in Florida. I metderien while a student at my third school.
I continued to ride that bike in Florida, it became my sole transportation for a winter in Minneapolis, and at another point was my sole transportation for three years in Portland.
The next major holiday I spent with my family and was utterly miserable, my fault not theirs, I was busy mourning what I didn't have rather than celebrating what I did. Now I enjoy family holidays and holidays alone. Each has their pluses and minuses.
mizzmarvel. I had intended to write this one closer to Thanksgiving, but life got busy and complicated and I haven't been in a writing mood.Life is a strange interconnected thing with many causes and effects woven together like a bowl of spaghetti. Perspective and memory both tend to distort. Forgive the distortions of memory, perspective, and storytelling.
My family accumulates holiday traditions like redneck families accumulate junk cars. Thanksgivings of my youth involved a large adult table and one or more kids' tables. The largest of which involved a whole pig, which didn't quite fit in the oven, and a goose as main dishes. Yes, I was used to family holidays.
I knew that Thanksgiving of 1984 was going to be different. I think in the late summer I had some vague idea of a holiday with the girlfriend's family. But I didn't really think about it, holiday's just happened in my experience.
When fall came I had a close encounter with a brick wall (we're talking figuratively here, not literally). Thanksgiving with the girlfriend's family was out because the girlfriend was out. A flight from Boston to Florida was out of the question. Even if the last of my funds hadn't been spent in fits of manic-depressive splendor, my mom would never see the justification in such an expenditure when I was scheduled to come home in another month anyway. Plus, if she got wind of where my grades were there'd be an ice storm in Florida when I landed. Yeah, my grades were what you'd expect from someone who had too good a time early on and a breakdown a bit later. My average in Chemistry was around 13%, Physics was somewhere in the single digits, the others were a scattering of higher failing grades.
Emotionally, financially, and academically I had reached the end of my rope, my arms were getting tired, and my feet were dangling over the abyss.
What to do? The only thing I could, I would spend the holiday week at school. Everyone I knew would be going home for the week so there would be no distractions and I could study.
So I did. I sat at my desk alternating from one book to the next, watching the campus slowly empty outside my window. I got up early, studied, drank tea, and studied more. By Wednesday there was one other person left on my floor and he was leaving.
Thanksgiving morning I got up early, dressed as warmly as I could, and rode my bike down to the bus station. The weather was crispy cold, biting through gloves and hat easily, but my core stayed warm with the exertion. I bought myself and my bike a ticket to The Cape and caught the next bus down. I'd ridden this bus many times in the last six months, but for different reasons. She lived there. Whether I was doing it as a self-destructive desire to rub a ton of salt into my wounds or to prove to myself I would live I don't know, but either way that's where I was going.
The weather at my destination wasn't any warmer. The wind between the houses and trees felt a lot like the wind between the skyscrapers. As the bus pulled away I saddled up and hunched over the handlebars against the cold. I rode on the deserted roads, alternately pushing until my lungs burned and my face iced or slowing so the sweat chilled. I rode all around the area, but did not go to that house.
Cold clear weather. Lungs burning. The stark beauty of Fall. Hands going numb on the handlebars. An emptiness wrapped in emptiness.
When I had rode all I could ride and felt all I could feel, I turned back to the bus station. The bus was warm and the rhythm a strange diesel meditation. Back in Boston I exited onto familiar roads strangely quiet. I rode back to school arriving a little before sundown.
There was only one cafeteria open. I made my way down to it for supper. There were three people working the counter and one other person in the dining area. It was warm and quiet.
I went back up to my dorm room, settled in with my tea and my work. It had been a good day.
"Just being alive,
it can really hurt sometimes.
These moments given,
are a gift from time." Kate Bush "Moments of Pleasure"
Oh, how did it turn out you ask? Well, most of the stories that are based on real life don't have an end, but this one has closure in parts.
I left campus for good the following month at the end of term. Thanks to my work beginning on Thanksgiving week, I raised my Chemistry grade into the mid 70's and my Physics grade came up high enough so I didn't fail. The remainder of my grades were A's and B's. I chose not to return, instead enrolling in a community college in Florida. I met
derien while a student at my third school.I continued to ride that bike in Florida, it became my sole transportation for a winter in Minneapolis, and at another point was my sole transportation for three years in Portland.
The next major holiday I spent with my family and was utterly miserable, my fault not theirs, I was busy mourning what I didn't have rather than celebrating what I did. Now I enjoy family holidays and holidays alone. Each has their pluses and minuses.
