Thanksgiving

I just got back from having Thanksgiving dinner with the EAP folk. It was significantly better than I thought it would be. It's always funny to watch the French people struggling with the concept of Thanksgiving (Benedicte brought cranberry sauce for the dinner, and had to explain very exactly to the chef what exactly he was expected to do with it. I was there early, so I got to watch. That was fun). I'd explained to Benedicte in great detail just what my dietary restrictions are, so she passed it on to the people at the restaurant and I didn't have to worry. This made it much more possible for me to actually enjoy the meal.

I didn't mean for this to be a post about actually giving thanks, but that's where it decided to go, so here's the backstory.

We were all supposed to bring desserts, so Laura came over to my place this afternoon and we made creme caramel and mousse au chocolat. Laura's having an on-and-off hard time here, this week being one of the -on- times, and halfway through cooking things, when we were at a lull, she went into my room to look at her cell phone or something and when I walked in she was crying. I gave her a hug and asked her what was wrong, and it turned out she'd missed a call from her mom and didn't have a calling card and couldn't call her back. So I set her up with Skype and left her alone for a while. When she came out she was crying even more. Her mom had given her a passive-aggressively hard time about staying in France for the year, which is nothing out of the ordinary, judging from what I know.

I think I have no idea how lucky I am to have a good relationship with my mom. All of my family, but at least among the people here it seems much more common to have a bad relationship with moms than with anyone else. Laura's mom doesn't do it for her, two or three of the other girls seem to have moms who are downright harmful, and at least one of the other girls just can't seem to communicate with her mom. I really have no idea how lucky I am to have a mother I can call at 3am her time and not only not get yelled at but actually get some useful advice.

At dinner tonight we started talking about music, and I told the people at my table about the CDs my dad made me for Christmas a couple years ago. Those CDs are probably the best gift I ever received, and I wish I had put them all on my computer before I came here. The sheer amount of things my dad knows never ceases to amaze me. My favorite memories from childhood are of lying on the couch listening to him read out loud, and I cannot imagine what it would have been like not to have had that time. The things I learned!

Every story I tell about my immediate family is a good one.

So that's what I'm giving thanks for this year, or at least this moment. For the fact that I not only love but also genuinely like my family.