Thanksgiving 2013

I spent Thanksgiving at my cousin’s. I have a ton of cousins, some older, some younger and some I don’t keep in touch with. Thanksgivings were always at my cousin’s house on my father’s side of the family. This year, I was at my cousin’s on my Mom’s side of the family. When I wasn’t a vegetarian, I did a Thanksgiving dinner once and the food turned out great. However, as I’m shifting toward being vegan, it’s getting harder and harder to handle meat products. The thought of killing something and eating it is not appealing to me. I’d rather pick vegetables and fruits.

I suppose Thanksgiving is not about food, but rather about being grateful for what we have, giving to those who don't have and spending time with family and friends. Me and my family are so different and argue over everything. I get along much better with my younger cousins than the older ones because they keep up with what’s going in the world around us and have discussions that actually make sense to me. But, all in all it went well. We didn’t end up killing each other or anything. In fact, we even pulled out the Ouija board, put on some candles and turned off the lights to call on friendly ghosts without success. It was an interesting evening and was nice to see everyone.

Of course, Thanksgiving weekend ended with a trip to an outdoor ice skating rink. We were supposed to go see a movie with my nieces, but the older one couldn’t make up her mind and the younger one insisted on ice skating. 

It was chilly and crowded, but it reminded me of lots of childhood memories of how mom used to take me skating and waited until I finished having fun. There were no “walkers” to prevent a fall as you see in the photo. I just wobbled, hanged on to the rails, skated, fell and got back up again. Yep, good old memories reeled in my mind like a film from yesterday. On one occasion one of my many cousins, who still lives in Iran, landed with her knee on the blade of her skate, blood gushing out. Few weeks later, she was back on that rink.