Thanksgiving over five hundred miles away. I drove over twenty-six miles in two different cars, and ended up staying with a family I'd never met before. My best friend's cousin or something like that.
From the start, my friend and I had promised each other we would get homework done. We have busy hands, a load of school work and don't like idely watching the TV for long. I soon realized, we were not the only one with busy hands. My friend's cousin's mother hardly sat still for an instant. She was always in the kitchen, like her husband was always afixed to a beer. She made us drinks, offered us food, and rifled through the cabinets for supplies for thanksgiving dinner.
My friend's cousin is a bachelor. He has a limited amount of silverware, and when we were setting the table, his mother told his that the smaller place would be her spot. When I asked her who should recieve the smaller fork, she just said "Put it by my place."
While, she cleaned up after dinner, and her husband and son (as well as myself) sat around drinking wine and talking about politics. I almost didn't realize the dynamic because it was so calm, a normalized division of labor. The next day, I was setting the table again, and her son told me to once again place the small plate in front of where his mother was sitting. Despite the fact that she had spend all afternoon cooking, while my friend and I sat doing homework and her husband lingered around the kitchen with beer.
I thought, for a while, that it was some sort of arrogance. That everyone thought less of her because they gave her the small plate, because she cleaned all the dishes while we were loafing around after dinner. But later, I watched her husband clumsily lift up the pie crust to try and help her piece it together and realized it was normalcy. He probably wanted to help, just as I asked her a few times if I could, and she denied needing it, but didn't know how too.
It reminded me of a thought I had when I first got into college. How could my mom given up being an engineer to raise childern? Did she also do small things like that which become normal? Maybe the most prominent lesson: to be thankful for uneventful sacrifices.