A True Thanksgiving
Well, you have to know that if something has prompted me to dust this blog off after...lets see here, almost FOUR months away, then it must be fairly monumental; and it is. Today is November 22, and I have a truly great Thanksgiving story to relate to you. It's a personal account involving myself and a good friend that I can honestly say I am giving thanks for today.
You see, this Thanksgiving was the first in my entire life that I couldnt be with my family. As it happened I had to work all day serving OTHER people's families their Thanksgiving dinners, while my own traveled to Asheville to celebrate with my brother Joel and HIS family - this has been tradition for several years now. Typically I have been able to get the time off from work without issue, but not this year. Instead I stayed here in Wilmington, and planned to eat dinner at my Aunts house with her family and friends, after my shift ended. Well after going in at 8AM, expecting to get out around 2, I finally stumbled out of work bruised and bloody (not exagerating, but that's a blog for another day) around 4 and called my Aunt, only to learn that i had in fact missed dinner.
Seriously, I dont know about you, but the only holiday that I think would be more miserable to spend alone than Thanksgiving is Christmas - heaven forbid I ever find myself facing that scenario. But anyway...needless to by 5:00 today I was pretty bummed. These last few days leading up to Turkey Day havent exactly been easy either - in fact they've been pretty miserable in their own right as well; again though, that's a story for another blog. So I decided to do the only thing I really felt like doing right then - going home, curling up into a ball and going to sleep until this day was over. On the way home though, I got a phone call from one Velvet Arnold, and from that phone call stems the thankfulness I mentioned at the start of this story.
Velvet and I have been friends since a chance meeting at the Ben Folds concert this past summer in Raleigh - if memory serves, her first words to me were
"You gonna fucking sit down and have a beer, or are you going to stand there?"
I liked her immediately. Anyway, I chatted with Velvet (or Grandma as I affectionately call her) for a few minutes (she was in Raleigh celebrating Thanksgiving with her family) giving her the much abbreviated version of my day and trying not to sound to depressed. I ultimately got off the phone with her about the time I reached my driveway, at which point I hung up, went inside, warmed up the one pathetic piece of pork roast I had left over from dinner the night before, ate it, and went to bed still feeling that I had just had the worst Thanksgiving of my entire life.
About an hour and a half later, my phone rang again (Blink 182 "Girl At The Rock Show") waking me from some pretty intense Kafka dreams. It was Velvet, inquiring as to what I was up to at that moment. I of course said nothing much, since I was no longer sleeping, and merely laying in bed wondering why she has called me back so soon. Velvet then informed me that since I had clearly been depressed on the phone, she was bringing me a Thanksgiving dinner and that she was about 15 minutes away from my house. I dont even have proper words to express my feelings at that point in time - suffice to say I was overwhelmed.
Twenty minutes (and one wrong turn) later Velvet was on my doorstep with an entire Thanksgiving dinner, made from scratch by her family. I can say with all sincerity that I have rarely been as glad to see anyone as I was to see her. However, it's the sheer selflessness of what she did that I find remarkable. To leave her own family (esp. on this day) and drive all the way from Raleigh to Wilmington, just to bring me dinner on the hunch that I was having a miserable day, is simply amazing. When a few sympathetic words over the phone would have been satisfactory, she went out of her way to be there for me, and I cant thank her enough.
I guess what I am getting at is this - today I am thankful for many things, my family, my friends, my pets, my health, my life in general, etc. etc. But I am particularly thankful for Velvet and I hope that anyone reading this is lucky enough to have a friend like her in their lives as well. You may not know this, but "Thanksgiving" means quite literally "a prayer expressing gratitude" and today my gratitude really cant be put into words. This is a Thanksgiving I will always remember, so Velvet if you read this when you get home, Happy Thanksgiving - it's people like you that make this holiday truly special.
You see, this Thanksgiving was the first in my entire life that I couldnt be with my family. As it happened I had to work all day serving OTHER people's families their Thanksgiving dinners, while my own traveled to Asheville to celebrate with my brother Joel and HIS family - this has been tradition for several years now. Typically I have been able to get the time off from work without issue, but not this year. Instead I stayed here in Wilmington, and planned to eat dinner at my Aunts house with her family and friends, after my shift ended. Well after going in at 8AM, expecting to get out around 2, I finally stumbled out of work bruised and bloody (not exagerating, but that's a blog for another day) around 4 and called my Aunt, only to learn that i had in fact missed dinner.
Seriously, I dont know about you, but the only holiday that I think would be more miserable to spend alone than Thanksgiving is Christmas - heaven forbid I ever find myself facing that scenario. But anyway...needless to by 5:00 today I was pretty bummed. These last few days leading up to Turkey Day havent exactly been easy either - in fact they've been pretty miserable in their own right as well; again though, that's a story for another blog. So I decided to do the only thing I really felt like doing right then - going home, curling up into a ball and going to sleep until this day was over. On the way home though, I got a phone call from one Velvet Arnold, and from that phone call stems the thankfulness I mentioned at the start of this story.
Velvet and I have been friends since a chance meeting at the Ben Folds concert this past summer in Raleigh - if memory serves, her first words to me were
"You gonna fucking sit down and have a beer, or are you going to stand there?"
I liked her immediately. Anyway, I chatted with Velvet (or Grandma as I affectionately call her) for a few minutes (she was in Raleigh celebrating Thanksgiving with her family) giving her the much abbreviated version of my day and trying not to sound to depressed. I ultimately got off the phone with her about the time I reached my driveway, at which point I hung up, went inside, warmed up the one pathetic piece of pork roast I had left over from dinner the night before, ate it, and went to bed still feeling that I had just had the worst Thanksgiving of my entire life.
About an hour and a half later, my phone rang again (Blink 182 "Girl At The Rock Show") waking me from some pretty intense Kafka dreams. It was Velvet, inquiring as to what I was up to at that moment. I of course said nothing much, since I was no longer sleeping, and merely laying in bed wondering why she has called me back so soon. Velvet then informed me that since I had clearly been depressed on the phone, she was bringing me a Thanksgiving dinner and that she was about 15 minutes away from my house. I dont even have proper words to express my feelings at that point in time - suffice to say I was overwhelmed.
Twenty minutes (and one wrong turn) later Velvet was on my doorstep with an entire Thanksgiving dinner, made from scratch by her family. I can say with all sincerity that I have rarely been as glad to see anyone as I was to see her. However, it's the sheer selflessness of what she did that I find remarkable. To leave her own family (esp. on this day) and drive all the way from Raleigh to Wilmington, just to bring me dinner on the hunch that I was having a miserable day, is simply amazing. When a few sympathetic words over the phone would have been satisfactory, she went out of her way to be there for me, and I cant thank her enough.
I guess what I am getting at is this - today I am thankful for many things, my family, my friends, my pets, my health, my life in general, etc. etc. But I am particularly thankful for Velvet and I hope that anyone reading this is lucky enough to have a friend like her in their lives as well. You may not know this, but "Thanksgiving" means quite literally "a prayer expressing gratitude" and today my gratitude really cant be put into words. This is a Thanksgiving I will always remember, so Velvet if you read this when you get home, Happy Thanksgiving - it's people like you that make this holiday truly special.
posted by CarpeDM | 9:06 PM
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