Bittersweet Thanks//October 59th, 2024

 I remember the day after Thanksgiving one year, I believe I was twelve or thirteen.

I was sitting in my room, and heard noise outside my window. My first thought was that my two neighborhood 'best friends', who had recently decided they enjoyed each other's company far more than mine, were outside playing without me. 

I went to my window, wrapping my arms around my corduroy pumpkin and some little turkeys I'd placed around it, and looked out. 

I didn't see my supposed friends. In fact, I don't think I saw much of anything at all, as far as the source of the noise was concerned. But, what I did see, was a beautiful, gloomy, autumn afternoon, where a select amount of orange leaves still painted the gray sky. 

I'd told myself that year, that perhaps I would feel a little better about Halloween's end if I tried to extend the autumnal feeling by decorating more for Thanksgiving. I'd always hated Thanksgiving, the boring holiday that dared follow Halloween, and stood as a barrier between post-Halloween depression and, in my younger years, pre-Christmas excitement, but...the pumpkins and scarecrows remained, didn't they? November is, after all, still fall. 

I took a step back, taking in my decorations and what was outside my window, and I believe that was the moment it truly hit me that Thanksgiving is the end. The last piece of it. 

I remember sitting down on my bed, writing some of these thoughts down in a now probably long-gone old notebook. Having my cry as if I were at a funeral for a beloved friend. 

I eventually picked up a magazine from a little crate I kept in my room at the time, some back issue of American Girl, unsure of what else to do with myself. As I flipped through the pages, I came upon a the 'Paint A Pumpkin' craft and realized I'd grabbed the September/October issue. My eyes once again clouded over, as I remembered the anticipation I felt upon receiving this issue two months before. Halloween was on the horizon, and now, as I looked out at the gray sky once more, took in the sparse amount of orange leaves on the sprawling branches, I realized that my time of year, all of it, was truly over until September came around again.

I still may not have loved Thanksgiving, but that was the first year I was sad to see it go.