Moose in the Kitchen

Yesterday afternoon I hiked up to my favorite tree. Yes, out of all the trees in the world, I have chosen a favorite. It’s a very nice tree, with a perfect hollow for sitting and thinking and escaping the outside world. Its bark is rough but not prickly, which I’m sure you’ll agree is crucial for a tree you want to sit in. You have to hike a steep grade to get there, which filters out people who might otherwise be trying to steal my tree’s affections. But the tree is quite devoted to me, even when I forget to visit it for months at a time.

Tree arms, rough but not prickly.

View from tree. When I die, I want someone sprinkle my ashes here. Volunteers?

Getting here is just a quick drive down the coast from San Francisco. I feel profoundly grateful to live somewhere I can have both amazing tom kha gai and a (semi)convenient Tree With a View. Whenever I hike up to my tree, things come clear. Sometimes I go up hoping for clarity, sometimes I don’t, but it always happens.

Yesterday, I was thinking about Thanksgiving. As you do two days before Thanksgiving. My first Thanksgiving away from home – my sophomore year at college – I spent with a similarly stranded friend. We planned to volunteer at a soup kitchen, shuffle for a spot on Fifth Avenue to watch the Macy’s parade, and eat something festive. But the night before Thanksgiving, she ended up in the emergency room with gallstones. We were there all night and stumbled home on Thanksgiving morning and immediately lost consciousness. We woke up around 3 p.m. and wondered what in god’s name we were going to eat. (College students are not notable for their preparations for anything that won’t reflect poorly on your GPA.) Luckily, a convenience store was open, so my first Thanksgiving away involved eating shrimp salad, Entenmann’s cake, and watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I remember that Thanksgiving fondly, probably because I wasn’t the one with gallstones.

Other Thanksgivings – notably Thanksgivings with my ex – were fraught with unbearable, soul-chewing tension. I don’t know why, but Thanksgiving was a tough time of year for us. Our first Thanksgiving was uncomfortable and our last was the culmination of Truly Awful, and is a story that would turn your hair curly. Unless your hair is already curly, in which case it might fly off your head entirely. So I’m sure you’ll thank me for keeping it to myself. Especially because any stories I could tell would be just that – stories. From my point of view and with the linguistic embellishments that would gain me the most sympathy and affix a villainous handlebar moustache under my ex’s nose. Sitting in my tree yesterday, I finally realized that all those wretched Thanksgivings were a symptom of my talent for drama. Not that he didn’t play his part, but some esoteric wisdom of the ages finally penetrated my resilient little skull: If you don’t want strife, you don’t have to have it. WHAT A NOVEL AND COMPELLING CONCEPT. Now, I’m not good in moments of turmoil, which is a problem. I can’t think properly and I go into a spin that can have unfortunate repercussions for everyone. But that certainly doesn’t have to be the way my life goes.

I don’t want drama any more. I don’t want those days or weeks of uncertainty or the raw feeling in my chest when I feel helpless in the face of my own life circumstances. Now, I’m sure this will take practice and I’m sure the patterns of 30 years will assert themselves when they feel they’re being ignored – don’t you want to flip out? isn’t it FUN? don’t be coy, you know you love it – but I’m quite certain I can beat them into submission with my heavy wooden bat of metaphor.

Looking back, I’ve been on a major drama diet in past few months. Standing up for myself when necessary, but stepping away when the situation threatens to devolve into he said/she said/BUT I’M RIGHT AND HERE’S WHY. My brain just took a little while to catch up.

I’m very thankful to have control over my own life. And I’m thankful for my arboreal assistant.

Now it’s time to finish my work so I can devote the appropriate amount of time to dreaming of tomorrow’s turkey. May your Thanksgiving be full of good things, both mental and culinary.

Related posts:

1. One-Hundred Percent Airplane Free
2. No Birds Were Harmed in the Making of My Poem. Would That I Could Say the Same About Dinner.
3. The Dog is Just Happy We Finally Hooked Her Up With an Indoor Bathroom
4. Questionable Christmas Cookies
5. Ringing In the New Year With Inexplicable Bruises