A Salad Days Thanksgiving Side Dish 🥗
Let's feast in our own way.
“…My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood. To say as I said then!”
- Cleopatra, from Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra
Welcome to Salad Days, a weekly mortification in which I read and analyze my deeply embarrassing and alarmingly pious college diaries, circa 2007-2010. What a time to be alive.
I always wanted to be a Real Artist, and these diaries (pitiful as they may be) are a weird and sweet catalog of what that meant for me as a 19-year-old. They are heavy on the “repressed queer kid trying to be a good Christian and a good artist” schtick—but deftly veiled in the protective cover of feigned evangelicalism. Everything is left unedited, but entries are occasionally censored for people who probably wouldn’t appreciate me using their names.
Want to start at the beginning? Start with #1 here.
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I’m writing this on Thanksgiving morning, cozy in my apartment while it drizzles outside. My artificial, pre-lit Christmas tree is up—but with a gaping hole of darkness in the middle from the strand that needs bulb replacements. My contribution to tonight’s Friendsgiving has already been cooked and stacked precariously in the fridge, ready to be re-heated when the time is right. I plan to sit around and read books all day. After I hit “send” on this little Salad Days note, the laptop stays closed.
Instead of sharing a diary entry today, I wanted to offer a small comparison. When I was nineteen and writing the entries I’ve been sharing with you through this Salad Days project, I had a very particular vision of what my future Thanksgivings would look like at age thirty-four. By this point, I would be a professor. I’d be married. I’d have a whole pack of young, curly-haired children. And I’d preside over my Thanksgiving table as a not-yet-greying matriarch with all the grace of a woman with a plan.
As it turns out, I preferred a change of plans. Or no plan at all.
Can I tell you a secret? I had nine years of married Thanksgivings. I was a professor for four of them. Children are cute and were generally present at all those yearly feasts. I never went a Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce or sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows). And, to be totally honest, it was all a little…meh.
Is this sacrilegious? Am I being cruel? Does this disappoint you?
There will be no turkey for me today. I insisted on a Mexican-themed meal, and I’m inviting over some friends for a small Friendsgiving. I have no interest in “presiding” over a table. At some point in the night, I hope to play Bananagrams while drinking my third Dr. Pepper of the evening. I will be wearing my comfy jeans with a hair tie through the button loop so that it’s easier to exist. It will all be very nice and free from any holiday expectations.
My nineteen-year-old self would be alarmed. I know she would. This is not the life she planned: divorced, queer, on her second career, sober, and child-free. She might be pleased with the whole “writer” bit, but she’d shudder at how “lonely” I must be. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her otherwise.
But I would keep trying to tell her otherwise. I would tell her that this Friendsgiving dinner party is all I need. Bananagrams is very fun. A quiet day and a loud night will fill her up more than any married Thanksgiving spent nursing a too-large turkey she doesn’t even like. This new kind of Thanksgiving is enough, and it’s what she’s waited for (even if it doesn’t feel right to her young ears).
It’s nice to do things differently. It’s good to feast differently.