Thanksgiving on a Saturday

We had missed Thanksgiving, so we were going to have our own. Julia made reservations at Grandma’s Kitchen to have a taste of some American food to celebrate the holiday. She just had one request of us and that was to dress nicely. Get snazzy if you will. So I got in my blazer and khaki’s with a button down and met up with Chris and Sophie at the front of the school. Chris was in a suit with a red shirt and I was feeling underdressed, but no matter. This was Thanksgiving and coming together was all that really mattered. So the three of us walked to the subway station in our finest apparel, ignoring the stares from passerby’s, when I realized that I felt older all of a sudden. I wasn’t having Thanksgiving with my family or around the Kirtz’s dinner table. I had made a group of friends, like family, and planned to spend my holiday with them. It felt like something my parents would do. We got on the subway car and received even more stares. Three foreigners, one in a suit, one in a blazer and one in a dress holding onto the middle pole in the subway car and watching the cars in front of us through the doors connecting them. The other cars were bouncing around all over the place from our perspective. I only did this to try and ignore the subtle attempts by the Chinese to take pictures of us on their phones and cameras. They tried to be subtle, but failed miserably. They would take a picture of a trashcan, then of a window, then twenty or so of us. The three of us huddled around the pole and it looked as if we were praying the way our heads were tilted downward. I know I was thanking Superman for this opportunity to celebrate this holiday dedicated to gluttony. We got off at Jianguomen and it ended up we went to the wrong Grandma’s Kitchen, so I hailed a cab to the right one. We walked into the room and I felt like it was a scene from a TV show, like a reunion of some sort, where the time slows down and you see everyone’s expression clearly. They were all dressed the same as Chris, Sophie and I. Erick was also in a suit, so was Jamie, Julia was in a dress and Stephanie was dressed up too. The lot of us expatriates were sitting around this average American restaurant, but it felt comfortable and close and so tackily American that we felt back in America… if only briefly. The table cloth was red and white plaid like the picnic ones. The chairs were wooden and bent so they were 19th century looking. The prices were normal American prices which meant it was fairly expensive but it didn’t matter. We were going to feast tonight. Spare no expense; we were going to walk out of there holding our stomachs. They had no real Thanksgiving type foods, but American food was going to suffice. I pulled out a picture of my parents and put it on the table, propped against the napkin holder. Now I was eating with them too. I had friends and family. I got a turkey sandwich, a banana milkshake and apple pie. Dinner conversation was nice. We pretended that we were all family anyway. Chris and Sophie were one married couple, Jamie and Julia were another and Julia was Sophie’s sister, connecting them in that way. I was the godfather of Chris and Sophie’s imaginary child who also happened to be me, Stephanie was a close family friend and Erick was the uncle from Chile and Peru that no one knows how he got in the family but still love anyway. We laughed the whole dinner through. I walked out of there, never happier to be hurting and the happiest I’d been all week. We walked around the area, ending up in Wangfujing to let the food digest, but eventually ended up on the subway. Chris and Sophie ended up on the car in front of us so Erick, Stephanie and I had to wait for another one. I continued to ignore the stares from the other people looking at the best dressed people in the entire subway. Stephanie and Erick got off a stop before me. When they left I struck up a conversation with one of the fellow passengers. I looked at him and said, “Ni qu nar?” Where are you going? And he said, “I’m from Melbourne.” Oh… that was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. He actually spoke Chinese so we talked in Chinese and English and it was good fun. He was a very nice guy and shook my hand violently as I left to walk from Jishuitan to my house down the nigh near empty sidewalks of Beijing at 10:30. The fog obscured the night sky, and if you looked up through the half bare branches of the trees, the dead leaves of the trees on the boulevard melded into one and made the trees seem live again. I walked the whole way home with a smile on my face.