I thought I would write this post tomorrow. Our Santiago-style Thanksgiving celebration will be after the fact so it only seemed apt that the post would then follow.

Family holiday photos of past… My beautiful Mama.

Well, it’s almost 10 pm here in Santiago, on Thursday, November 24, Thanksgiving 2011, and I’m compelled to write now. I got home from work a little while ago after spending the day with 6.7 million people for whom it was pretty much just like any other day of the week. I just warmed up dinner and talked to my mom and sat down on the couch with my husband, who is also still in his work clothes and reaching for his guitar, just like any other day of the week. I’m on my laptop, checking in on how my friends and family are doing near and far, yep, just like any other day of the week.

My mom and her mom, my aunts, my uncle, my cousins.

Except that Thanksgiving has been on my mind since my mom arrived last week. I’m thankful she’s here and that she is thankful that she finally gets to see exactly where it is her daughter and son-in-law have set up married life. I debated how best to celebrate, but with teaching so late on Thursdays it didn’t make sense to cook a big dinner or try to squeeze into one of the gringo-centric prix fixe meals happening around the city. So we’ve decided to officially celebrate tomorrow… at an Italian restaurant, which only seems fitting given our respective heritage.

Italians!

Still, we have spent decades gathering with family on the fourth Thursday of November to feast on autumn’s bounty. This is the day. I may be able to move myself from country to country, but I can’t seem to be able to move this day.

It was in the 80s today. I woke up, went to work, met up with my mom, and went to work again. The routine was in place, but something was different–this feeling that somehow it should be cold out and there should be certain aromas coming from the kitchen and I should be trading text messages with friends and family around the country on my nationwide, unlimited-text calling plan. I’ve thought so much about how it should be this way that I woke up yesterday convinced it was, in fact, Thanksgiving. I posted a status to that affect, wished a healthy holiday to all those I emailed with and was well onto my second cup of coffee before I was notified of my error. It was only, in fact, Wednesday, just like any other day of the week.

Winter, as it is for my family back home.

But we count our blessings no matter where we are, no matter the temperature or the continent or the time of year. And that is what I’ve sat down here to do as I used to do in journals in high school, as I’m used to doing around a large, family- and friend-packed table spotted with the colorful, traditional delicacies I can almost taste now if I really concentrate. We go around and say what we are thankful for this moment, this year, this lifetime. So I subject you, dear reader, to my gratitude list, if only to know that I have uttered in on the real day, on the Thursday that I didn’t realize mattered so much to me until it felt almost like any other day.

Carols.

I am grateful for the love of family, of my husband, of dear friends.

… for Skype so I could wish my best friend Happy Birthday (and so she could inform me that yesterday was not, in fact, Thanksgiving).

… for the Chilean mail system so one of the most stunning hand-made gifts of all time could be delivered from one of the most stunning friends of all time on a day post offices are usually closed and no such beautiful gifts pass from hand to hand.

Mama’s mad holiday style!

… for words. For the technological ease with which they form here. For the pain-staking skill with which they were laid down hundreds of years ago. For the beauty they lift like a film from the pages of my favorite books. For the ability to have been able to make a living organizing them into sets of three and six and twelve. For the way writers like Joan Didion, Lorrie Moore, Jennifer Egan, Ian McEwan, Ann Patchett, and Jonathan Franzen have organized them. For their meaning in and across languages. For the questions people ask and answer. For pen pals.

… for health. For the ability to get out of bed and walk to work. For the will to learn. For the impetus to laugh. For the involuntary wisdom of the body. For the health of my husband and our families.

… for surprise. For the look on my mom’s face when she turned the corner at the airport.

The whole family’s mad holiday style!

… for chance. For meeting my husband at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco on the fourth Friday of April, 2009.

… for the opportunity to be living abroad in Chile and to be starting a marriage in this most unusual and wonderful and challenging and inspiring of ways.

… for the moments my students understand something they didn’t a minute before.

… for the novel I need to keep writing and for the advice of Francis Ford Coppola, who says he writes in the mornings, before his feelings have been hurt, and who doesn’t look at what he’s written until he’s 80 pages in and assures that if you just keep doing it, you will get better.

Luca’s first Christmas! (and three generations of Massoni Men!)

… for the beautiful babies of my girlfriends. For the chance to watch them become wonderful mothers. For my wonderful mother. For my husband’s wonderful mother.

… for music and light and sound and the salt of a tear and the salt of the sea and the blaze of the sun and the rush of wind past my ears on a bike as we speed down a hill and the bodies of water my body has floated in.

… for memory and mis-memory.

… for Friday Night Lights. Clear eyes, full hearts.

… for teachers.

… for open windows and waves and wonder.

At least I know Easter won’t be just like any other day. But how could it ever get better than this?!

Happy Thanksgiving whenever, however you celebrate.