A Very Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving, then!

This was a wonderful interlude. I brought my friend David along - his family is in California, and visiting them over the break wouldn't work out, but I felt that unnecessarily spending Thanksgiving on base was stupid. Since my house is within 300 miles of base, and since he works for the chapel, his paperwork for this only needed a week to process (unlike the rest of us, who needed about a month's advance notice).

We rented a car for this. There's a Hertz on base, and I've used them before for the occasional duty-free weekend. I tend to get compact cars, as it's usually just me traveling and they tend to charge significantly less for them. David is a foot taller than me, but his mom assured him that he would indeed fit in a compact car. We figured that if he had to lay down for the whole trip, that is indeed a "fit", but it actually worked out fine. Make and model were another story. They gave us a powder-blue Nissan versa. Girliest thing I've ever seen that wasn't parked next to a Barbie's Dream House. Eh, whatever. The heat works, the headlights work, the brakes work, and the music works. These are the major concerns for us.

My sisters had arrived the night before, in time to see my parents' show. The week or so prior to this happy holiday, we'd been thinking of it with no small amount of excitement and trepidation. All three girls were planning to bring a male associate (mine the only one not holding some sort of romantic status), Mom and Dad's show opened that weekend*, and the first really good (or bad) winter storm was kicking up for right around that time.

*If you don't have anyone in your family who does theater, let me explain: The week before opening night is called tech week. Your significant other/family member/best friend actually vanishes off the face of the earth during this time, and when you do see them (awake), they usually have wild eyes and their hair's out of control as they feverishly mutter lines to themselves.** It's great fun.
** My Mom is much more refined. I can't actually see her doing this. I've just seen all my friends and both my sisters doing this. Great fun. Bring them food, set it down, and back away slowly. You'll see them again opening night, and they should be back to themselves at the afterparty.***
***I have one friend who doesn't just act or play, he also directs. He's a case from about a month before the show to a week after the run is done, and randomly disappears for weeks at a time. You just sort of take it in stride.

My Mom does Norman Rockwell-style Thanksgiving meal. I love this. There is turkey. There is in-the-bird stuffing, and stovetop stuffing. There are probably five different kinds of potatoes and squash that have been mashed, candied, and/or baked. There is green bean casserole (a personal favorite of my sister's - I by contrast tend to devour the mashed potatoes). And there is pie. Lovely, lovely pie. Blueberry, and pumpkin, and apple - and it's all made with you in mind. (This is a difference you can taste. The galley food NEVER has this.) So good. So so good.

One of the boys couldn't make it, thanks to the impending doom that the weather heralded, but it was nonetheless a splendid time. Traditionally, we tend to go around the table and each talk about something we're thankful for this year, but we only made it as far as me and David. I had said something about the Navy, or the tests that I've made it through, and that sparked interest, and then David and I took turns fielding questions from everyone else for what seemed to make up a lot of the rest of dinnertime. Oops.

But AFTER dinner, it was game time. Not the football game, no. My family's big on speed scrabble. Mom was elsewhere at the time, otherwise she would have decimated us - my Mom is brilliant with wordplay. The boys were playing for the first time - speed scrabble is based on evaluating very quickly what you have and what you can make out of it, and doesn't use the board, so it's a little something to get used to.

Taboo's another favorite - David and I were on the same team, which was fortunate because about half of what comes out of my brain now is Navy-related, and no one else would have understood. This was followed by Pictionary - I'm not sure why, but I am spectacularly awful at Pictionary. It's not that I can't draw; it's that I can't communicate through drawing. Elizabeth's the only person who ever seems to be able to guess what I'm thinking, and she was paired with John. It was a lot of fun, though.

There's a statement that you learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. And I've also found that one of the swiftest ways that I grow closer to a person is to laugh with them. And these are both events in which my family excels.

It was so very good to be home.