Lifetecture

Where I come from Holiday means vacation. Going away somewhere for a break, no matter what the date. Here in America, holiday denotes a celebration or an occasion associated with a specific date and of all those “holidays,” Thanksgiving is my favorite.

Today it’s the date where people eat like it’s Christmas, only instead of all the emotional baggage the former usually induces for me – this new holiday that I have adopted means gathering with friends and some family, and everyone eats a lot and says “Thank you.”

Lately I’ve been counting my blessings, tracking my gratitude in a series of notebooks that I keep beside the bed. At this stage in my life I know that whatever I focus my attention on increases, so why not concentrate on the positive? This year I’m lucky enough to be here in New York with my brother J. We’re going to eat later with one of my best friends in the world: A.H. & her hubby C. along with their baby J.L. – my godson. I offered to make cranberry sauce and I’ll go and mind the baby a little later so she can cook. I can’t wait!

My brother is on this crazy schedule where he gets up at 2AM in order to be in work by 3AM and I’m listening to the fruits of his labor right now: the early morning show on public radio. I tried to tiptoe around his early bedtime so that I could leave the sauce sit over-night. It was an idea that worked in theory, but my preparations seemed amplified by my attempts to be quiet.
At one point there were the combined sounds of sauce bubbling on the hob, the scraping of limes through the grater to garner their zest, the clang of the colander into the sink as I misjudged the balance of its remaining leg…poor J. The sight of the vividly red bubbling liquid bursting sent me into a fit of similarly explosive giggles. I can only blame the discombobulating journey from Chicago and the fact that the cranberry reduction simmered like molten lava farting and staining all surrounding surfaces in his New York micro-kitchen.

He got his own back this morning when by 3:30AM I could no longer ignore the sounds of his extreme early-morning preparations…it turned out that his car service was running late so I woke up enough to say goodbye and have a little chat. By 4AM I had tossed and turned in bed to no avail when the new baby in the adjoining apartment started to wail alarmingly. It was enough make me get up and make breakfast and as a result I’m still up.

The sauce is now ready for our dinner – albeit a little more tart than I was expecting. The rapidly expanding sounds of Brooklyn waking up remind me that I am in a home away from home.