Feeling thankful

I'm feeling pretty thankful this Thanksgiving. I know - I know, our ancestors slaughtered the natives and took their land. It's a wet sack of lamesauce that it's become a holiday but I'm choosing to be positive about it for now. Me, I'm thankful for being surrounded by great people on all sides. My family, friends, neighbors, and even co-workers are all such outstanding people who do nothing but enrich my life.

Ashley and I spent our last-thursday-of-November at my aunt and uncle's place in Beverly where 12 of us devoured a 25lb turkey AND a ham. There were carrots, squash, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and umpteen other sides including a green bean casserole that Ashley made which was a hit. Good job, fiend! After dinner, my cousin Jayme made an appearance thanks to Google's new video chat. She's been stationed with the airforce in Korea for a while now. It's crazy to think that my brother and I used to play "kitties and doggies" with her and her sister when we were little. Now she mans a machine gun that fires about 800 rounds/min.

Last night Ash and I had a sequel Thanksgiving dinner with our neighbors in Salem. The food was delicious, but nothing compares to the conversation had when we all get together. Everyone comes from such diverse backgrounds, it's like having a conversation with a walking, talking, 5-headed encyclopedia. We capped the evening with a game of Balderdash, and I learned that the only thing more intellectually stimulating than factual trivia is convincing bullshit.

The game goes like this: Players take turns being the "dasher", who picks a card and randomly selects a topic from : words, dates, movies, people, or acronyms. They then read the corresponding item from the card. Eg. "Nov. 10, 1958" for a date, "Agillo" for a word, "Bjorn Leirvik" for a name, "Fast Forward" for a movie, or "L.A.P.M.S." for an acronym. The remaining players then write down a bullshit description of the item (or the actual description if they think they know it). The dasher then reads all of the descriptions aloud along with the actual description. The players finally try to guess which is the real definition. Players move their pieces on a board for each person that thinks their description is the real one. If no one gets it right, the dasher moves his piece.

For the date "Nov. 10, 1958", the real answer might be "Birth of the Bossa nova in Rio de Janeiro", but someone might write "Birthdate of Chip Kass, funny car racer." When you get a bunch of clever people together, this game becomes incredibly difficult and hilarious. The real answers are always a challenge because they can be completely ridiculous, or utterly uncreative. They key is to play off the other players knowledge and listen carefully to the wording of the descriptions.

One last thing I'm thankful for is a new bedframe that Ashley and I bought yesterday. Our previous frame had wheels and a center-support that was too high, so when we got in bed, the whole bed wanted to rotate like Austin Powers'. Getting the new frame home from Ikea was a miracle. We had to take it out of it's box and cram it in between my front passenger side seat and the back seat behind the driver. I drove home with my steering wheel about 4 inches away from my stomach, and my knees bumping the underside of the dashboard. When we got home, we discovered that we trashed the manual along with the box back at the store. Thankfully, Ikea posts all of their manuals online, and the frame came together beautifully. No more skating across the floor in our sleep!

Laura Upstairs

It's a stereotype of sorts, maybe a little slice of the American dream, to move into a new house and be warmly welcomed by the cookie cutter couple that lives next door. One day there's a knock on your door and there they are, partially obscured by some gargantuan gift basket filled with fruit, pasta, vegetables, margarita mix and the rest of the elements of the food pyramid. Six months later, you're borrowing cups of sugar from each other and playing drunken Pictionary together one weekend a month.

Laura intercepted me in the shared stairwell of our newly shared house as I was moving in about a month ago. She welcomed me to my new home with a shy smile the obligatory basket full of food. I was taken aback by her gesture, and accepted the basket excitedly. After I introduced her to my family who were in the midst of moving me in, she mentioned having a lot of extra stuff she was getting rid of that we could have if we wanted it. We talked briefly, and she explained that I should take a look sooner than later because she was going away tomorrow. Anxious not to leave all the moving to my family, I made a quick trip to the 3rd floor with her to see if she had anything that Tim and I might be able to use. I ended up taking a small rack that I could use to get the most out of my minuscule closet space.

I mentioned the experience to Tim, and how she was pretty determined to get rid of all of her stuff. As it was, I didn't really think we needed anything else, but maybe Tim could find something. We found her later, and I introduced them to each other. She showed us around her apartment as if we were at some sort of liquidation sale. Still, something was strange. She even seemed to want to get rid of things that she liked. There was no clear line between what she wanted to keep and what she would leave out on the sidewalk if we didn't take it. Even some of her clothes were up for grabs, as she said they were too big for her now.

I just met this woman. She was nice. I liked her. But I didn't know how to react to some things. When I asked her how long she was going away for, she said she didn't know. "Maybe a couple weeks... or a month, if my dad will take care of me." I think she said her father lived in Acton. Anyway she offered only the vague explanation that she had been sick, but I didn't want to pry. In retrospect, it seems like she somehow wanted to be asked.

Tim and I took a bunch of items off of her hands, but when Tim returned to the apartment, I stayed and talked with her for a while in her kitchen. How did this 35-40 year old woman come to live alone in this place in Lynn? What did she do for work? Who was her family? We talked about anything but the answers to those questions, and her apartment offered only the faintest hints. An old "guy couch" as she put it. A photo of her and what might have been her niece. A few plants that Tim and I took. An ashtray filled with cigarettes on the porch. When I finally left, I was convinced that she had some sort of terminal illness. Still, I wanted to see her again and get to know her, maybe bring some zany color into her apparently quiet life.

Days later, I came home from work to find a note from her that Tim put on my desk. It said she'd be staying in Somerville for a while with someone, and that we should get lunch sometime if I was free. She left a number, which wasn't the same as the number I had already programmed in my phone as "Laura Upstairs." I wanted to call her. I was going to call her. I wish that I had called her.

Laura killed herself a week or so after she was gone. Days later, a moving truck was there and a couple people were upstairs taking away the rest of her things. I paused in the driveway that night and stared up at her porch where I locked eyes with someone who evidently knew her... or not at all.