Today I am celebrating Thanksgiving here in Santa Cruz in a very meaningful and heartfelt way. Which is how I think every day should be celebrated, actually. Whether it’s Thanksgiving or not. And where ever I happen to find myself. For that knowledge and wisdom alone I am grateful. I am also very grateful that I am able to share myself with those less fortunate today and participate in the Homeless Thanksgiving Dinner at the Santa Cruz Vets Hall. After that, DearSweetDave and I will go over to his mom’s house and spend some time with his mom and her husband. We’ll end the day sharing dinner with “my family” in Carmel Valley.
Three Thanksgivings, one day that is very full of thanks and gratitude and love.
My first Thanksgiving in Santa Cruz, I was a very different person and I will admit to you right now that I had a lot of trouble recognizing all the gifts for which I should have been thankful. In fact, I spent many years complaining about that “first” Thanksgiving and even just this morning was complaining about it. Until I stopped myself. And realized that it was 16 years ago and really there were blessings and gifts all around me even on that day and I just wasn’t ready to see them and embrace them.
I moved to Santa Cruz because of a boy. Let’s call him GSC. I haven’t written about him on this blog before. Which is actually rather amazing if I were to really sit and think about it because we had a truly remarkable friendship that can only be described as both the very best and the most tumultuous relationship of my life. I loved GSC with everything that I had. I just didn’t understand that everything I had was so incomplete and not at all what I was supposed to be giving. I also didn’t understand that I needed to love myself first. I honestly believed, at the time that if my world did not include GSC and did not orbit him that I might truly stop breathing. I learned to love myself first, to believe in me and to speak my truth, but by the time that I did, our friendship and relationship had suffered far too much irreparable damage and it completely imploded.
On that first Thanksgiving, though, life was still rosy and my orbit was still circling around GSC. He was my sun and I was his moon. We had moved to Santa Cruz in September of that year, but it took us a long while to find just the right house. We moved here because we were going to start a band. Yes, a band. Isn’t that why everyone moves to Santa Cruz? In our case, we had moved with a bunch of other Deadheads and we were certain, oh so certain, that our band was going to be the one that was oh so much better than all the rest.
It didn’t matter, of course, that we had absolutely no original material. Or that most of us barely knew how to play our instruments of choice. We had a dream, man, and that was going to carry all of us through.
We found our perfect hippie communal house in Bonny Doon just before Thanksgiving. Up until that time, I had actually been living in Berkeley because when I arrived in Santa Cruz from Washington, D.C., where I had left a really secure job and a nice comfortable home because of this boy and this dream, I soon realized that living in a tent in the woods with NakedIan while we searched for just the perfect house wasn’t really going to do it. Not for Clyde and me. Who wasn’t so happy living in a tent and the back of a car all day long every day. So I went to Berkeley and took refuge with my friends D&D who were living just off College Avenue at the time. Sweet refuge. I will be forever grateful to them for their taking us in when we needed that shelter. Truly grateful.
Like I said, we scored the house in Bonny Doon just before Thanksgiving. The other band members all hailed from other parts of America and headed home that Thanksgiving to share the usual communal meal with their own families. Usually GSC would have done the same, but for some reason that year he stayed in Santa Cruz. I honestly can not tell you why he did. But he did.
I came from Berkeley and met him at our new home in Bonny Doon. Which was a big, rambling house that truly felt like the house that Jack built. It had been built by the owner as a project on a concrete slab poured onto the side of a hill. You could tell that various parts had been thrown on as he got creative idea after creative idea. What it did have was lots of big windows and lots of rooms and these amazing homemade redwood bathtubs that easily fit four people. I still miss those tubs. What it did not have was central heat or insulation. Also, because we had just taken possession and it was a holiday weekend, it also did not have electricity.
So there we were. GSC and me and Clyde. In this big house with no heat (there was a woodstove, but we had no wood!), no electricity, no running water, no telephone to call home, and no furniture. But we had each other. So all should have been okay.
We figured we would spend Thanksgiving at one of the local restaurants. At least one local restaurant had to be open on Thanksgiving, right? We were hoping to find a bar, too, to watch the Thanksgiving football games. That was our plan. To drive into town on Thanksgiving and spend our day there.
This was the first Thanksgiving after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Which means that Santa Cruz wasn’t quite Santa Cruz. Pacific Avenue was still a mass of rubble. And the only institution open that day? The Food Bin.
Period.
We discovered that after spending nearly two hours driving around town and going to every possible place we thought just HAD TO BE OPEN. Only to find that they were all closed. With each door that we tried, we got a little more irritated with each other. A little more snippy. A little more terse. We were both allowing the closed doors and cold damp air to dampen our own spirits and make us forget the blessings that we both truly shared. We weren’t thankful, we were miserable.
The one store that was open in Santa Cruz that day turned out to be our trusty little Food Bin. The smallest of health food stores, that carries just a small selection of the most basic needs, it was open. We trudged in there and searched the shelves for sustenance. Something, anything that we could combine to concoct a meal. We were Pilgrims who were going to have to rely on the generosity of VISA instead of Indians for our Thanksgiving meal.
Perhaps because of the hours spent searching for an open restaurant and perhaps because of the lack of a proper football game viewing that day, things didn’t go well in the aisles of the Food Bin. We bickered. We snapped. We grabbed things off the shelves and shoved them back. We almost had a wrestling match over carrots and potatoes.
It was when I pointed out that we really didn’t have a stove or oven that worked at the house (no electricity and the current range was, alas, electric) not to mention pots or pans or even plates or bowls and that we’d be cooking whatever meal we managed to concoct using our aluminum camping equipment and propane stove that we both almost burst into tears.
Thanksgiving, my ass.
Begrudgingly, we settled for spaghetti and jarred pasta sauce. Our only solace was that both were organic. But at that point we were both so distraught that neither one of us was up for giving praise to anyone, the Universe included, for our bounty.
We silently drove back up the hill in the waning light. It was getting dark so we were going to have to work quickly to both locate the cooking supplies and hopefully manage to light some camping candles, as well, to guide us as we made our meal.
Which is exactly what we did.
We made our spaghetti. By the time the noodles finally cooked, we didn’t even bother to heat the sauce. We just dumped it in. Stirred it around. And silently started eating the noodles out of the pot with some plastic forks we had managed to find stashed in a drawer in our kitchen.
There was no mention of thanks. There was no mention of being grateful. There was only the sound of us slurping the noodles and the occasional whimper from Clyde who definitely wanted his share.
For many years after that Thanksgiving, when the next Thanksgiving would roll around GSC and I would say to one another, “Thank goodness we’re not spending a Thanksgiving like that first one in Santa Cruz. That was the worst Thanksgiving ever!”
I realize now, today, that I have never truly given thanks for all that I had on that day. So today, I’m changing that. Today, I’m changing my song about that worst Thanksgiving.
It was my first Thanksgiving in Santa Cruz. A city that wrapped me in its very warm embrace and helped me to become the very ME who I am today. A city that has given me friends and family and a home.
On that day, I had a home. Something so many do not have. I had a warm sleeping bag, a bright shiny future, a healthy body, a dog that loved me and the very best friend a girl could ever hope to have. I was standing on the brink of my future. I really did have it all.
I am thankful for that opportunity. Just as I am thankful for every opportunity. Life is a beautiful ride. I am thankful to be able to both enjoy it and to take it every day.
That's what love looks like. When your husband eats the sauerkraut just because you made it. And then he tells you that it actually doesn't taste so bad! My nana would be so glad.
