I thought it had been ten years since I was last "home" for Thanksgiving. I've been telling people that. "Last time I was home for Thanksgiving I was in College!" Even wrote that in the title of my facebook Thanksgiving photo album. But I was wrong, it's only been nine years. I forgot that I took nine months off after graduating from college. I lived at home during that time, substitute teaching and working at the church I grew up in, and I got to know my youngest sister Elizabeth, who was only 11 when I'd left for school four years earlier.
Nine years later and we're in a similar place. Although Lauren is obviously no longer away at Wheaton while Elizabeth and I are home, she is still in school, doing her residency at Loyola University and couldn't come home this Thanksgiving. She's on call. So I was just me and Elizabeth and the rents. Just like it was in the year 2000.
In the year 2000.
In just a month I would turn down a marriage proposal and move to another state to start grad school. In just a month Elizabeth would start to crack down on memorizing the Driver's Ed booklet and then turn 16. Now we're 24 and 31. She lives with a man she's not engaged to and I am licensed and ordained in my profession.
Nine years.
Lauren and Jake were together back then. Catherine and David were broken up. No one knew there would be a marriage and a divorce, a Jeremy and a Joseph and all the others in between.
Grandma and Grandpa still travelled back then and flew to Jamaica later that winter. I would use all my savings from subbing to go visit over Spring Break. And now I'm visiting them again. They were the main impetus for coming home for Thanksgiving this year. Grandpa's not been feeling too great over the past few months and I used my vacation time to take a guilty pleasure trip to LA and resolved to go home for Turkey Day to make up for it. Then Grandpa went into the hospital for pneumonia four days before I was supposed to arrive. So I was glad I'd made plans to come home.
I drove a Toyota Corolla nine years ago, and then a boyfriend's car, then a Kia Sportage and am finally back to another Corolla. Elizabeth's been in more wrecks and had more tickets than I have men, which is really saying something. Lauren got the good car in the divorce. So there's that. I've moved eleven times in nine years and travelled to seven foreign countries. Elizabeth just got her first apartment on her own this year and her boyfriend promptly moved into it. Lauren got the house in the divorce and promptly sold it. She's now living with a gay friend of ours from high school in a condo she owns in Seattle.
Work is crazy. I still work at a church, like I did during those nine months after college but before seminary. Instead of a Youth Ministry Intern though, I'm now a Minister to Young Adults and I run a theater instead of a classroom.
Other things have changed too. Whereas Elizabeth worshipped me those months we lived together: making me signs to hang on my desk at work, driving my car around the block to practice, writing me sweet letters when I went away to school... now I'm just the crazy old sister who has too many cats, is too skinny and uses phrases like "compassion fatigue" in ordinary conversation. And I think she's a wanna-be grown up who needs to be more responsible and stop asking our parents for money. But I do think we still have a mutual respect for one another in there somewhere. Elizabeth has no idea what I do for a living which makes me a bit of a mystery and maybe just a little bit cool since there's no way in hell she'd get up and talk in front of that many people, and I think her work as an inner city 5th grade teacher is amazing and the best work she could possibly be doing in this broken world.
Nine years.
Nine years to be thankful this Thanksgiving.
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