Thanksgiving 1996, 2014, and 2023

Last year I did a big Thanksgiving round-up post. This year I decided to write about two Thanksgivings I haven’t before - 1996, when my economic life was at its lowest, and 2014, when I was last at peak earnings. There’s a bit about this year at the end. This is the longest blog post I’ve ever made, because it’s just for me, really.

Thanksgiving, 1996

The day before Thanksgiving in 1996, Tim (not his real name) and I have been sitting in his broken down 1975 Cadillac on the side of I-40 for over an hour when I can’t take it anymore. I get out of the car and wrap the gross old sock we’ve been using to protect our hands when we feed oil into the dying automotive beast around a stick I find on the ground, and ask Tim for his lighter. Tim stares at me in wide-eyed fear, and tries to argue with me, but I’ve had it and refuse to sit here in the cold on the side of an almost-mountain in White County any longer. I light the sock on fire and wave it over my head. This action prompts wealthier drivers to call for help, and after a brief ride with a state trooper and a couple of hours in a Waffle House, Tim’s brother and father rescue come to get us and we are driven deep into the mountains, back into land their family owns all along one road, where people usually only drive if invited.

Thanksgiving, 2014

For the first time in my life, I’m in a car allowed on to Sea Island. I’ve been to Saint Simon’s Island many times in my life, as my mother’s family is from Brunswick, but never to what I’ve always thought of as “the rich people island”, Sea Island, because cars are restricted to driving there by property ownership or reservation at the exclusive resort that is our destination. It’s low tide as we roll in, and I marvel at how small the channel is underneath the bridge between Saint Simon’s and Sea Island. There’s little more than a stream I could swim in a few minutes at low tide between the island open to everyone, and the one closed to all but the wealthy and their workers. My grandfather did tell me that Sea Island was once much more a proper island when he was young, but Sea Island has been creeping towards Saint Simon’s his whole life, which is drawing to a close now. My grandmother Alice, who took me to Saint Simon’s the most, has been dead for years now. It’s the first time I’ve been back to the area since her death, as my other visits have only been to my Grandfather’s, where his extended family owns property all along one rural road about twenty miles away. People drive down the road where my Grandfather lives all the time, but to get onto Sea Island, you have to be invited.

Thanksgiving, 1996

My college boyfriend Tim has never taken any girlfriend home before, because he has a deep unstated shame about his origins, something that he won’t come to terms with while we’re together. Tim and I have been dating for over a year now, and living together for almost six months. None of his background bothers me like it bothers him. I went to High School in a factory town in middle Tennessee with a lot of people at this particular extreme end of the American economic spectrum, and so what I see along his stretch of family road in Appalachia doesn’t phase me. I’m twenty, and all I can do with the first real love of my life is think about how physically and mentally sick I’ll feel if we break up. He’s a redhead, and the last year with him has been a mid-90’s haze of pot smoke and sex. We moved into our first apartment together in July, and he’s taking time off from finishing his BA to work full time at the local video rental store. I’m still enrolled in college this semester, but barely - the housing crunch in Murfreesboro is real, and the cost of MTSU is jumping by hundreds of dollars in fees each year. My parents weren’t prepared or willing, it turns out, to really help me with college, and I’ve felt like a total failure since we moved in together and Tim said he’d quit school so we could make our rent while I take classes, because school means I can only work about thirty hours per week, all at minimum wage jobs.

The loss of Tim’s car on the side of I-40 is just the next step on the ladder down of our current economic free-fall, and this visit back into the mountains is something horribly humbling for the young man I’m dating. He was supposed to be the one who went off to college to become the first white-collar worker in his family. Tim’s only thing to show so far for his early 20’s - he’s two years older than me - is his girlfriend, this exotically tall thing he picked up at MTSU, that, despite all logic anyone can apply, seems attached to him.

I’ll realize much later that I will be mismatched with Tim for three years, including a failed engagement, for a lot of reasons, but chief among them will be the following. First, I imprinted as a small girl on my father, and that imprint gave me a tragic attraction to Appalchain dick that will result in some of the most beautiful, hilarious, tragic, and wonderful moments of my life. Second, I have in my genes a predisposition to addiction, which while I understand from early on this means I must at all costs avoid booze and white colored drugs, I will not realize until much later that a person can be addicted to love and sex. Third, Tim and I smoke clouds of bad 90’s ditch weed that intensifies the love and sex feelings and this also keeps me from moving on, quite literally, as I tend to get glued in front of a television screen or lose myself in art while I’m high.

No one in the holler Tim grew up in can understand why I’m here, with this guy, who has always been seen as an odd duck at best and a soft college boy to boot. He’s shown up for Thanksgiving after dropping out of college with no car, no money, and a six foot tall woman. It’s a mystery how we’re going to get out of this to everyone, including us.

Thanksgiving, 2014

My in-laws have paid for a suite at the Sea Island resort this Thanksgiving, both as a surprise and a brag. When the husband and I get our bags up to our rooms, it’s far too large for just us and the kids - the suite is possibly the same size of the tiny warehouse loft we own in downtown Atlanta. The in-laws aren’t even sharing this giant space with us, they’re down the hall in their own little palace. As I get the kids settled in, I take ibuprofen, because I cracked a tooth down to the root when I was down here on the coast just a week ago helping my Grandpa clean out his house. My mother-in-law heard my husband talk about how much I loved the area on that visit, and what a shame it was that we couldn't all go for a vacation. So she booked this Thanksgiving vacation for us, and I try not to think about how much it must have cost as the pain from a dental problem I can’t afford to fix flares in my jaw.

The husband and I are at an economic crossroads this Thanksgiving. I have recently admitted that I need to take a full time government contract with the CDC to keep my Digital Asset Management consulting business afloat, and while the terms are generous, the job will limit my potential for previously higher earnings. I’ve had to lay off my two employees the previous month, as no new contracts have been signed for the last six months. Basically, the CDC will become my day job in December of 2014, and that’s almost as painful as the tooth, because I swore after UPS I’d never work in a cubical again and I know I’m about to have to do just that.

I’ll realize much later that the in-laws are paying for this trip on borrowed dreams, that what I’ve started to suspect about the Nashville WASPs is true. Yes, once they had the kind of wealth that could support this sort of holiday, but the out of control spending habits the mother-in-law has had her whole life (like booking the largest suites on Sea Island at the last minute for Thanksgiving), have lead the husband’s mother to completely out-spend her generational wealth. The security I think is waiting for my children when they become adults is little more than an illusion propped up by moments of extravagance like this one. In 2014, I don’t know the economic reality yet - but like my broken tooth, the truth is just underneath the surface of a well dressed exterior.

After we get settled in the suite as big as our house, I let my Grandmother’s brother, a man who lives on Saint Simons, know that I’m in town for the holiday. His family, my mother’s cousins, are surprised to find that I’m at the resort. It’s a mystery to all of my mother’s family how I got here, including me.

Thanksgiving, 1996

I can remember, even now, twenty-seven years later, the exact layout of the tiny house in the mountains where I spent almost two weeks with Tim while we figured out how to get back to our life in our college town. Luckily Tim’s family had internet service, so I could email my professors that I was having a family emergency and would not be back on time.

I spent my time during our involuntary economic confinement alternately getting to know the women in Tim’s family and using their dial-up line to get on with a nanny company in New England, where wealthy people would pay me to live with them and look after their children. Tim’s mom was especially impressed with my ability to get people to call me long-distance so that I might work for them; this was not something anyone in her orbit had ever done before. I have always known how to get new jobs though - it’s just something I’m good at doing. That I was going to go work in child care as a domestic also impressed the other women, as it showed I knew how to do mom stuff. I was gaining their respect during our stay just by not freaking out and making plans for paying bills somehow.

We were still trapped on a deeply rural road with no car though, and it was terrifying, so I tried not to think about the situation too much. The house was deep enough in the mountains and so surrounded by trees that it was hard to see the sky. Views from windows showed only forest, as did any walk I might be ok to take by myself. When I complained to Tim after a few days that I just needed to see some sky, he called an old friend.

About a week after Thanksgiving we met Tim’s old friend - and local weed dealer - who hiked us up to the top of a nearby mountain where the top had been clear-cut for a communications tower. Tim and I smoked up for the first time since we had been stranded on the side of I-40, and I was so happy to be in real sunlight that once I got high I tried to take off my top just to let the sun hit my skin. It was cold enough that we could see our breath, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to soak up as much natural light as possible. This embarrassed Tim, who convinced me to just hold my hoodie up to under my bra and let my pale stomach and lower back soak up the rays. Tim’s friend clearly thought I was off my rocker, and I guess by that point in our adventure I was.

Thanksgiving, 2014

I can remember, even now, nine years later, the exact way my daughters looked as we waited for our turn at the Thanksgiving meal on Sea Island. They were eight and six years old, and wearing colorful knit Hanna Anderson dresses with rhinestone clips in their hair. They giggled and laughed that whole trip, delighted by the luxury of it all. My youngest danced on the beach in a pink dress, laughing and playing in the sand with other children. My oldest and I ran our hands over the skull of a sea turtle in the children’s nature center inside the resort. It’s illegal, of course, to own any part of a sea turtle, so I had never seen the skull of one before myself. It’s illegal to have these things unless you are Sea Island, and you can call someone at the DNR and get an exception.

We visit with my Great-uncle and his family, the man who kept my Grandmother financially afloat the last decade of her life, at his house on Saint Simons. My mother’s cousins are interested in me, and my family, and how I came to be here at this time and place. The last time I was here was for my Grandmother’s funeral. Everything is explained by my in-law’s money, but I confide to a younger second cousin how being on Sea Island feels a little like being on that science fiction train where Captain America eats a baby. He laughs, but no one over 30 gets the joke. They’re all impressed that I’m going to work for the CDC soon, as it’s a job they can understand. It’s always been tough to explain digital asset management, but that I can land a good federal job shows I know how to network. For the first time, I gain their respect.

The next morning I woke up in extreme pain. The broken tooth had been bothering me, off and on, since the trip started, but it was in full flare now. The mother in law gave me some of her Hydocodone, and I spent the morning doped out while everyone else went on a lovely nature sight-seeing trip. I missed out on seeing a bald eagle, the first in my lifetime in the marshes of Glynn, fly right in front of the private boat. I had wanted to be with my children and husband as the beauty of this place I have always loved was laid out before them, but I was laid out in bed in a pain generated by decades of dental health mismanagement. I was now in one of the wealthiest places in the world, and I couldn’t move because I couldn’t afford to fix the health problems I had gathered while getting here.

I spent the rest of our trip breaking the pain pills the mother in law gave me in half and alternating with ibuprofen to dull the pain enough that I could function but not taking so much that I’m bedridden.

Thanksgiving, 1996

After Tim works with his brother cleaning a few septic tanks, and after the greater Tim family realizes that if they don’t help us out they’re stuck with us, we manage to get a used Ford Fiesta and drive out of the mountains two weeks after we went in. Tim is ridiculously happy, but I’m nihilistic for the first time in my life. I’ve realized I have to leave Tennessee altogether the next week to fly around New England to interview for nanny jobs to have any prospects at all. I’ve finally understood that I’m going to have to drop out of college and work full time for at least a year in order to feed and shelter myself. I’ve experienced real poverty several times over the last six months, culminating in being stuck on a mountain sleeping on the couch of people who couldn’t really afford for me to be there.

In the next year, 1997, I will be a nanny on the Philadelphia Main Line for ninety days. Then I’ll stay with my Great Aunt Beth near the Texas-Mexico border helping out in her tax office for another ninety days. Then I’ll move back to Murfreesboro, and back in with Tim because he has asked me to marry him. Thanksgiving 1997 breaks us apart entirely, as my family does everything they can to break us up before we can get married, because they are terrified for reasons I can’t understand at the time of me tying my life to this stoner who has started showing real signs of mental health problems that I won’t know for another two years are schizophrenia.

I have my first broken tooth that November in 1997, and when my Grandfather found out during Thanksgiving dinner that I planned to have the tooth pulled rather than fixed, he drove to our rental house after dinner and screamed at us. After Grandpa leaves, Tim sits down on the edge of our shared bed and says “I don’t think I can take your family.” We are supposed to pick out wedding announcements the next week, and his parents are supposed to meet mine at Christmas. It takes us another couple of weeks to admit our first adult relationship is over, and to admit it’s time to let go. Our parents never meet.

Tim takes the car and I take the apartment, selling off our shared life piece by piece and I proceed to exist in a space you might call “housing insecure” until I can move back into the college dorms for fall semester 1998. It’s a blow to my pride to be 22 and surrounded by freshmen, but at least I have my own bed again. As I slowly pull my life back together and the twentieth century moves towards its close, Thanksgiving becomes something I start celebrating on my own, and will remain a mostly solitary holiday until I marry in 2004.

Thanksgiving 2014

As the husband and I drive our beaten Toyota off the island and back to Atlanta, I look out over the marshes and wonder when I’ll see them again. My Grandmother, who struggled both with her finances and depression her whole life, died a few years before this Thanksgiving. I just helped my Grandfather clean out his house back in the hammocks for good, so he could move into a house close to the VA hospital in Augusta. He will spend the rest of his life next door to my mother in Augusta, so she can drive him back and forth to his ever more frequent end of life healthcare appointments. Grandpa will miss the marshes, and his boat, but it’s too dangerous those last two years of his life for him to keep his legs under him on the tides.

I will get back to the islands a few more times. In 2016 I’ll go for my Great-uncle’s funeral, where, as requested, AC/DC was played inside the Brunswick Episcopal church.Then there will be a children’s school field trip in 2017, and a camping trip to Cumberland with the girls in 2018. Most recently there was the disaster of a conference in 2022 on Jekyll. Each time I go back to the Golden Isles after Thanksgiving 2014 will be a little bit more painful, and more of a reminder that maybe I shouldn’t go at all. I lose my wallet at a gas station on the way to my Great-uncle’s funeral, and my Great Aunt Beth has to cover me, even though we do have a good time. The school field trip is just after a hurricane, and full of sudden plan changes, though we do have a good time. The camping trip is over-ambitious for just one adult with two kids, especially since I’m still recovering from a broken elbow, and we end up leaving a day early, though we do have a good time. The professional conference in 2022 is between a chemical fire at the port and another hurricane, and I don’t have a good time.

The last thing I do in Brunswick, when I’m there for the last time in November 2022, is stop to pee in the parking lot of my Grandmother’s old condo. I needed to pee and I just…pulled in and let go in the bushes. I look at her old condo on the edge of the marsh one more time, trying to soak in the place and the memories, and wishing like hell I had been able to understand her better when I was younger. I didn’t get her entirely until I was forty, and by the time I was forty, she was gone. Sometimes, you just have to let things go.

Thanksgiving 2023

This year my oldest and I are celebrating Thanksgiving together in Atlanta. The youngest is with the husband and the in-laws in Nashville. With so many changes coming soon, like the oldest going off to college next year far away, I’m not sure there will ever be a Thanksgiving with all four of us again. I have to wonder how many I’ll have in Atlanta again. I should know by now looking back over the Thanksgivings that I have had, that there’s no telling where I’ll end up.

I want to pull my children tight against me and tell them that the years they’re about to live between eighteen and thirty will be some of the brightest and most intense, but that even when their lives mostly even out, things can and will still be strange and beautiful. The years I’ve had Thanksgiving with both of them have been some of the best.

My friends Jeff and Zach had invited us to their Thanksgiving in Chattanooga, this year, and I entertained the idea for a while because I do think I would have fun at their house. But even though Jeff and Zach live in fully urbanized Chattanooga, I can’t make myself go into the mountains again for Thanksgiving. At least, I can’t make myself go into the mountains for Thanksgiving with an older car and so little money in the bank. Maybe I’ll go back one day when I know I can really take care of myself, when there’s no danger of being stranded or having a broken tooth, when I’m more ready for what surprise may come my way.

This Thanksgiving I sat across from my almost adult daughter, and tried to fix her face in my memory as much as I could. My youngest and the husband are off having an adventure in Nashville, a place I don’t go anymore. I’m very careful about holiday travel these days. Just like in 1996 and 2014, I should be preparing for another job, but I can't make myself do the real work to make a new job happen. I want to hold on to what I have. My almost adult daughter smiles at me, and I know that what I want and what will happen are two very different things.

The Third Job

October brought beautiful weather and, as always, so many wonderful neighborhood fairs, concerts, and happenings to the city that the population probably doubled every weekend. I went to almost none of these as I was busy working the two jobs and trying to keep up with the teenagers, so it shouldn’t have been a real surprise when I hit my breaking point by the end.

In years past the weekend of the local Halloween Parade was a huge event for our household. I’d take the kids all dressed up, and we’d have friends in from outside the city, back when we lived in Little Five Points. For over a dozen years we attended faithfully until we got gentrified out of walking distance and the kids felt they were too big to attend. This year, as my former neighbors cheered friends of mine walking in the parade, I was riding my bike down the Beltline on the way to the restaurant job, so I could start the final seven hours of my sixty-five-hour workweek. As I pedaled I suddenly I had to choose between running over tourists that decided to stop and block the entire path under the North Highland bridge or go off the side into the loose gravel. I wasn’t going so fast that I couldn’t feel the wreck about to happen, but I was going fast enough that I couldn’t stop the fall. As the gravel slid out from under me, I had one of those moments where time slows down, and I was aware that everyone around me was watching me lose control. I knew the injuries were coming despite my helmet and leather boots. I hit the gravel at a roll, sprawling out my whole body as witnesses rushed over.

After the fall I spit out dirt, reclaimed my now scratched glasses, said I was okay, and rode the final mile into work bleeding. There I limped to the back of the restaurant and picked small gravel out of one of my knees, cleaned the wound on my numb right hand where the palm was split a good inch, slapped on the biggest band-aids from the first aid kit and just…worked my shift. There wasn’t anything else to do. The wrist was sprained badly enough that I wore a brace for a week from CVS, but I was going to be damned if I spent an entire week’s second job wages on stitches, so now I have a scar on my right palm.

Just to underscore that what I’m doing has to stop – I can’t keep working sixty-five hours per week at these wages, both monetarily and bodily – a few things happened at my day job and in my personal life that were both frustrating a ridiculous. By the time the bandages came off my split palm a week ago, I broke and caved. The City of Atlanta was never going to put Cop City on the ballot, my socially concious day job was never going to pay me enough to get out of the debts of COVID, and I need to admit I’m beating myself up literally at this point trying to make those unrealistic things happen. Time to face reality. I picked up the phone and made the text I should have made two years ago. I let Henrik know I was ready to get back into Digital Asset Management in the private sector.

I didn’t stop blogging for a decade *just* because I was busy raising my babies. I also didn’t blog during that time because I was also professionally peaking. Ten years ago, in 2014, I had my biggest year, where I published a textbook and worked everywhere from Honolulu to Berlin. There are a lot of reasons why I left all that behind and shrunk my work area from worldwide covered by flights to a five-mile radius I cover on bike. Henrik, a good friend, was happy to hear from me. He laid it out straight, as he always does, something I’ve always valued in colleagues. The good news is that absolutely nothing has changed in the last eight years since I was on the job market. The bad news is that absolutely nothing has changed in the last eight years since I’ve been on the job market.

So, I took a deep breath, and started a third job this week – pulling myself back together professionally. I typed STOP COP CITY in as a candidate on my ballot in an uncontested race, knocked the dust off my resume, and did what I always do to get myself together. I started working even more.