All You Need is Love

My family does not invite family over for Thanksgiving.  We used to.  But then the pressure and stress of pleasing in-laws and grandmas and the like was ruining the holiday for us.  So we stopped.  Now we invite only who we truly want to spend time with and that has really made Thanksgiving great again.  Yesterday we had over friends: my mom's friend from college and her son, a young couple that are friends of the family, my boyfriend, and a few of my brother's friends.  No stress.  No unneeded obligations.  Just chilling, drinking down some brewskies, dinner's ready when its ready.  We play football in the yard, we all pitch in with the cooking, we play games, Scrabble in particular, but other stuff too (like Pit, which is hilarious and you should play if you haven't yet).  We were cranking Dispatch and then the Beatles...I mean, life is good.

Because I've been reading so much Virigina Woolf lately, I was reminded of the dinner scenes in both To the Lighthouse  and Mrs. Dalloway .  They're stuffy.  They're about isolation and inherent human loneliness.  Woolf focuses on aspects of human interaction that separate us from each other.  She writes about the numerous things that even our closest friends will never know or understand about us.  The thing is, these scenes are so poignant.  They resonate with me strongly because I understand exactly what she's talking about.  These scenes are incredibly beautiful and the words run together like tributaries to the ocean, eventually forming a complete and huge and wonderful idea.  Woolf is a GENIUS!

BUT, Thanksgivings at my house are beautiful too.  When we all sit down to dinner and no one shuts up long enough for anyone else to talk and we're all laughing at something we half way heard from down the table, I think, this is the dinner party that is real.  This is proving that human isolation is trumped sometimes by the sheer power of friendship.  When people are comfortable around each other, they are more open, more willing to connect.  For me that's the beauty of the holidays.  Well that and a perfect spiraling football against a blue autumn sky.  Great catch.

Thanks for reading y'all,
Chelsea