It is getting close to the holiday season and the onset of colder weather has prompted chit chat back in the office about Thanksgiving Day plans. Inevitably, older colleagues talk about visiting nearby family or in-laws, or having their adult kids fly back with grandchildren; but for me Thanksgiving has long since been more synonymous with friends. In the years since moving to Houston, I've found myself driving back against the clock in a Zipcar from a badly timed Thanksgiving hot pot dinner, trying to fry oreos and potatoes with buddies in our college dorm kitchen, and stuffing myself full on the culinary mishmash of an Asian American styled pot-luck... especially last year's hectic but fulfilling event at Wain. I remember Alvin making a ton of dishes inspired by the Gordon Ramsey shows he and Erica watched, despite having an imminent test and a slight cold, as well as the fun of having old friends driving in from cities, even states away. This precedence makes it more difficult for me in realizing that this will be the first time in six years that I will be spending Thanksgiving outside of Houston and all that it has come to represent. Because of the crazy way life works, I think that may be true for a couple of us. While this may sound like unceremonious complaining (especially for a purely American-manufactured holiday that is bookended by days of exorbitant consumerism), bear with me, I have a point.
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| I see your mosque and raise you a slightly bigger one. |
In fact, travelling and visiting different cultures has made me realize that we take for granted that lot of society rests on ceremony. In everything from why people build elaborate churches and mosques (see: Istanbul's 'mine-is-bigger-than-yours' history) to government mandated protocols (see: cat-tower's nonsensical conservatism), half of human effort seems exerted on creating and maintaining traditions. But stripped of them, life loses its waypoints and becomes disorienting and overwhelming, as I've sometimes found myself when in-between cultures. Graduating school is another powerful example where absent mile markers like semesters or chapters, we grasp for ways to rationalize the seemingly endless expanse of time between now and, ostensibly, retirement. I recently found myself in a conversation where we were trying to find college analogues to the workplace riffing off the fact that the new 'campus' is called just that. (A depressing comment: "You've been here less than five years, you'd still be a first semester freshmen.") Projects are one way of doing this. Birthdays, homecomings, and anniversaries are other ways that arguably bring more joy.
This is all a long way of saying happy birthday Chit Chat, and an apology for missing some of your guys' this year. But know that even if I'm half a world away and eating in a camp in the middle of a desert, I'll raise a glass (of water?) for any reason ya'll give me. Because we if we don't stand on ceremony, what else is there?
