I spent most of last week in vacation mode. I made an early break for it on Tuesday afternoon to reduce the amount of time I would spend sitting on I-95 and after a late night phone call upon arrival I put work on hold other than a few maintenance items each morning. Mom had announced our Thanksgiving plans in the most passive-aggressive manner possible, and that she did so unknowingly made it better. At some point in either late October or early November, well before I would have made plans on my own, I received an email calendar invitation for a restaurant reservation on Black Friday. No advance communication—just a calendar invite. That is the sort of direct communication style I appreciate but that most find off-putting. It was a restaurant we had tried to eat at on our last several trips but couldn’t get a table since it’s still the hot new restaurant in a food scene with limited options. I wasn’t expecting Asian fusion to be combined with a raw bar at a restaurant on the Georgia coast, but the octopus was the best I’ve ever had.

We don’t do Thanksgiving in the way many others seem to partake. We have never had massive gatherings with extended family. It was usually just the four of us and Mamaw and Papaw. This time there were five of us as my future sister-in-law joined us, but it was a low-key affair. We didn’t even eat turkey. Ham was the main dish for our Thanksgiving meal (and my subsequent lunches). Store-bought turkey is just bland after you’ve eaten organic, free-range wild turkey that you yourself harvested, and cooking it in an unfamiliar oven would do little to help that situation.

The best parts of the week were the times between the end of dinner and the start of whatever Hallmark movie was debuting that evening. I am no fan of any of the three or four Hallmark plots that are cycled and so when that came on it was my signal to go upstairs and read. During that hour-long interlude each evening, there was no television and most stayed off their phones and iPads. It was just conversation. The topic of discussion varied from plans for the upcoming wedding to new jobs and new apartments to potential hunting trips and travel destinations. That wasn’t exactly the point (though I want nothing to do with planning my brother’s wedding), but it was more just having people to talk with at more than a cursory depth. That has been the thing that this period of restrictions has limited the most. It is why I spend a couple hours most Saturday mornings on a zoom call with a group of friends from law school. I hope you too were able to avoid explosive topics and to have meaningful and enriching conversations over the Thanksgiving holiday.