Thanksgiving: Rice and Beans from the Drivethru at Roberto's

A memorable Thanksgiving, involving walking through a Mexican drivethru for dinner. I kid you not.

Mom and Bernie and I had planned on going out for a Thanksgiving dinner. Mom thought, in particular, that a fish place on the ocean would be open. I preferred an Italian place I'd been to a few months before. And our back-up was our favorite Greek restaurant. Nothing traditional, but the year had not been normal either, so it seemed to fit--the first year when my parents are not together, first holidays after Colin and Becky are married and living in the house they bought from my parents, first year with my lupus diagnosis, and Bryce can't make it home from New York so he planned on driving to Michigan with his girlfriend to see our extended family there.

I want to start by saying I feel extremely thankful for many things this year, having survived being high on the list. And many of my wonderful and unconditionally loving friends. Spain. My family. Lemons. My apartment by the beach. Visits from friends. The blue and white table cloth. Showers. Yoga. The gratitude goes on; I keep thinking of new things and adding to the list I started in my long-hand journal.

And I'm thankful that I got Thanksgiving Day off for the first time in two years. Once I'd slept in appropriately, I woke up, started my "thankful" list (which I might try to do more often than once a year; it recalls happinesses well), and decided to take a bike ride to the beach for some yoga. I invited mom to come along and by that time Jane had returned from Ben's where they'd started the Turkey and we talked about Thanksgiving memories and how we both tried to keep discontented or angry people out of our lives or create a protection against the ones we couldn't help but interact with. I have trouble with that still. Like when Sean was drunk (again) and yelled at me for not picking him up from the airport (even though I was at work and never agreed to do this) I felt oddly responsible and like I'd somehow messed up. Even now, I have to keep reminding myself that his anger is not about me.

Thanksgiving day here was beautiful. Beautiful! Sunny and warm and happy. We decided to ride our bikes over to a place that mom was thinking of buying for the family beach home (when she wins the lottery maybe?). As we're riding and ringing the bells on our cruisers and singing and chatting and crunching through fallen red leaves and laughing and wishing everyone happy thanksgiving, the smell of turkey and stuffing wafts out of every house.

The house mom has seen on the internet needs a lot of work, so that we didn't pursue that option, but she finds another few fliers of possible places. From there, we went by Ben's place to check on him and the turkey. I tried guitar hero for the first time and got booed off the stage. Oh, my breaking heart.

Straight to the beach next. I started to do my yoga routine with mom keeping up for a couple minutes, and Jane immediately into the corpse pose and rolling around barefoot in the grass. We felt like kids. Giggling and stretching and taking pictures and pinching ourselves to remind us that it is November and the waves are crashing below in full sunshine (don't worry, I had spf 45 on to prevent the flare). Yoga felt good as always. And I surprised myself by enjoying the company also. I love Jane and mom, but I usually like solitude during yoga. Teaches me to let happy people in more.

We all felt somewhat cold and tired by the time we'd finished so we rode back along the ocean to our apartments for snacks of crackers, cheese, smoked turkey, grapes, lavender biscotti, rosemary lemon cookies, ginger cookies and Jane's special tea ball tea. Yum all around.

After our snack and three-way chat, Jane left to visit some friends and mom and I had a chance to talk about a few of the changes in our respective social and physical situations in the past year.

Bernie showed up around 6pm wearing a sport coat and fancy shoes for our night out. I still hadn't showered so hurried to do that and get a little more spiffy myself. I wore the scarf Keith got me from Spain--reminders of more thankfullness. And then the great Thanksgiving Dinner Adventure of 2007 began.

Dr. F had recommended a restaurant down the street from my apartment: the one I could rarely find so drove up and down the amazingly quiet and rather darkened main street at least three times. I didn't find it, but got close. We found a great Spanish restaurant nearby--for another day. Closed for Thanksgiving.

I began to think this going out to eat might not be such a great idea. But, within walking distance of the Greek restaurant, we decided to assess our options there. Even from 500 yards away, we could see the darkened interior--closed also. "This was a nice walk!" I said.

We tried the fish place on the beach next. Found a great parking place and walked along to the rhythm of the waves to find that restaurant also dark and closed for the evening. Hmmmm. I offered the salmon in my freezer, and reminded them I was well supplied with home-baked goods. Maybe a home Thanksgiving dinner after all. We decided to drive a little more just because we were having so much fun listening to Jens Lekman sing about falling in love with a punk at the anti-war demonstration. Seven-11 was open. A few bars looked open but not busy and very TV heavy. I think Denny's was open too. And Roberto's taco place still had their lights on and cars moving through the drivethru.

After a couple more tours of that block, we parked to go inside Roberto's, but the door was locked. The drivethru window was open and the little metal box squawked, "May I take your order?" Keep in mind we are not in the car. And so ensued the decisions to get tacos or enchiladas? How much rice and beans? Did we want the horchata? Anything else? Chips? All done while reading the outside menu and bending down to talk to the little metal box on the side of the building. Mom and Bernie had to do the ordering since I was laughing uncontrollably by this point. And the men inside the restaurant chuckled persistently and spoke good naturedly in Spanish as they watched us, as Jane would say, "act like tools" outside. What fun!

Our order in, we stood outside the drivethru waiting for them to get it together. An SUV drove up with a surfing video playing inside and Bernie sidled up to it to watch through their back window. The owner of Roberto's came out to the take out window to explain that he had locked the door a couple hours earlier because someone came in and tried to rob them--at gunpoint! Scary stuff. We told him we were thankful everyone stayed safe. A drunk man came up to us as we got the bags of food and Bernie headed him off before he got too ugly.

Thanksgiving?!? Rice, beans, and tacos? We kept reminding ourselves and laughing.

We drove by Ben's place to visit with him and Jane and Bob. They'd had the traditional fare and were packing up the remains. They offered to share, but we had our feast in styrofoam so we drove back to my apartment to enjoy it on the blue and white checkered tablecloth with a bottle of Kenwood 2004 Merlot I found in my cupboards. And the cookies for dessert.

Not your traditional "Turkey Day" but a fairly fabulous celebration all the same!

I hope you enjoyed a holiday filled with gratitude, friends, laughter, and love.