Grateful.

November is my favorite month of the year. It has been for a minute. Two years ago, on November 6, my dad passed away. Nice timing, dad. Now I get to kick off my favorite month with the bittersweet memories of your life and death—mostly the irritating little splinter in my mind that reminds me of the fact I never got to say “goodbye” after all the splendid times we had together. It’s unfair, but we know that life rarely is that. Death is fair, though. We all experience this type of pain at several points in our lives before we eventually die. No exceptions. Seems fair.

I still love what November has to offer despite the lifelong reminder of my dad’s absence in my life. Even if my dad had died in any another month of the year, Thanksgiving would remind me of him. I didn’t get to spend enough of them with him. One day, my mom won’t be around, and I’ll think about her in the same way. We live a thousand miles apart, so we mostly see each other via weekly video chats. Thanksgiving also reminds me of the times I shared this holiday with my folks and siblings, before we grew up, moved away, and in some ways grew apart.

There are sickos out there who just skip right over Thanksgiving. As soon as the curtain drops on Halloween, they hang up Christmas lights and décor, showing no respect to one of the truly great American holidays. Yes, its origin is auspicious, but its spirit of togetherness and gratitude should help shift our focus away from the sights and smells of Christmas and onto how Thanksgiving mandates that we spend time with people we love (ideally) and have a good meal together. This is the only holiday we have that does this and also doesn’t require that we bring gifts along for the occasion. Instead, we prepare dishes and share laughs. Play board games. Watch football or the Macy’s parade. Or maybe go out and feed some homeless people. It’s a beautiful holiday, and it deserves more love and attention.

Through the Years

For over a decade, I’ve spent Thanksgiving with my wife and her family. I’ve had the pleasure of watching my nephews and nieces grow up into upstanding young citizens. I’ve watched my kids hang out with their cousins, giving me flashbacks of my childhood and kicking it with my cousins when I was a kid. Witnessing this young generation spend time together was beautiful. There aren’t too many more years of that, though, because the kids are growing up. That means less time hanging out with their old, corny, and boring parents. More time with their friends.

And their parents—us—we’re getting older, too. When that turkey dissolves in our guts and that trypto hits, it’s lights out. We’re shutting it down earlier than we used to and go silently into the night. My wife and I have hosted Thanksgiving every year for the last seven, and this year was our smallest crowd. Nineteen people, and everyone was gone by 4:30pm.

Sad.

We’ve never rolled deep into the wee hours of the night on Thanksgiving, but usually we get a good eight hours of hang time with family that we only get to see but a handful of days in the year. That’s another unfair thing that life throws at us. Times change. Seasons change. People change.  

A Gem

Every couple of weeks, I take my kids to the local branch of the county library to check out a book or two. On our last visit, I decided to pick a book up to read. I was on the verge of finishing Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act—a good read—and I wanted something to read once I was done. I needed something to cleanse my palate; I needed a good work of fiction. I was in the mood for something trippy, so I hit the sci-fi section and immediately saw a book positioned upright on one of the shelves. It seemed alone on an island, on display for some brave individual to check out. The cover (as seen below) depicts the phases of a moon passing through what appears to be a sun, against a cloudy blue-sky background.

I had never heard of Sequioa Nagamatsu (I should probably brush up on more works from contemporary writers), but the summary of this book was compelling enough to check it out. I’m around one-hundred and fifty pages from the end as I write this, but it’s been wonderful. It’s a book about a pandemic published after the COVID pandemic that deals heavy in life, loss, and the meaning of it all. You might be put off by that since we lived through it, but Mr. Nagamatsu presents a creative narrative told through the eyes of several people, animals, robots (and perhaps a deity; I still have to finish the book). It feels like a deeply personal work that is also universal. We all connect to it in some way because we’re all connected in some way.

It's a fantastic debut novel for a talented writer (so far). I hope he sticks the landing. That can be tricky with high concept stories. Either way, Sequioa Nagamatsu is a writer with whom you should become familiar. He’s going to create more incredible work.