On Thanksgiving Day, I spent the day alone. I knew this was going to be how I spent the day. While I didn’t love it, I had accepted that would be my holiday and made it the best that I could. Cooking gave me something to focus on and I’m glad I wasn’t too focused on missing my family. But there was no way not to miss everyone. When you do something every year of your life, it’s weird to not have it happen.
About a month ago, my family started to discuss what we could do as a family for Thanksgiving since we wouldn’t be together. We had decided to do a Zoom hangout and had to plan when everyone would be available. Not everyone was going to be free on Thanksgiving Day, so we planned the Zoom to be on the Saturday after. I knew that I would only have an hour before I had to run the Netflix Party group that I have, but we were planning on trying to keep it under an hour. So it would work out perfectly for me!
On Saturday, I decided to try to look a little nicer than normal. I put makeup on and moved my computer to a place in my house that has better lighting. Even though my family wouldn’t care if I was backlit, I wanted to try to look nice. This was us trying to celebrate, so I should make an effort. And I logged into Zoom a few minutes before we were supposed to be on there and a few other people from my family had already joined in.
Once we were all there, it was almost everyone in my family. One of my cousins was working so he couldn’t be there. But everyone else was able to be online. And that included everyone showing off their pets (we have a few cats and a few dogs in the family). I tried to get a good screenshot of the family, and I think this one is cute. But the pets weren’t in this particular shot.
For a lot of my family, this was their first time getting to see Rory outside of pictures posted online. And occasionally, he seemed to be really into what was happening on screen and I think he recognized my voice and my parents’ voices. I’m still sad I didn’t get to see him again in person a few weeks ago, but I know I’ll get to see him again in a few months.
This was the first time we were all on a Zoom together. We tried to use the time to catch up on what everyone has been up to. That’s usually what we do when we are together at Thanksgiving, so that seemed normal. And a lot of people did have things to update us about. One of my cousins moved and bought a new house. Another cousin moved right before the pandemic and she was telling us about what they’ve been doing to their house and her kids were telling us about online school. And of course, Ross and Krystle had updates on Rory and Krystle’s pregnancy. I didn’t have much to update everyone on since I’m not doing much. But I liked hearing everyone else and feeling connected to my family. That was something I missed from my Thanksgiving and I’m glad I didn’t miss it completely.
I wish I didn’t have a time constraint, but I really did have to log off after an hour. I stayed on as long as I could, but I had to leave before everyone else did. But they all knew that I was running a Netflix Party so they understood. And from what my parents told me, everyone else logged off only a minute or two later. They were just all saying goodbye to each other.
I am very grateful for technology because it allowed us to be together virtually. It’s not as good as being together in person, but it’s better than having nothing at all. I can’t imagine what this time would be like if we couldn’t be together on Zoom. I can’t imagine how I’d be dealing with things if I didn’t have my virtual hangouts. But at the same time, I hope this is the only time we have to do Thanksgiving this way. I want to believe that by next Thanksgiving, it will be safe to travel and be together. I know we will be ok if we had to do another virtual Thanksgiving next year, but I’m hoping this was a one-time thing.
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