Thankful

It's Thanksgiving Day, and the streets are empty of people. The usual hustle of my neighborhood is only a trickle of couples carrying bottles of wine and casserole dishes to turkey dinners; the nearly constant gusts of laundry steam coming from basement windows are replaced by wafting poultry. The most crowded buses are only ferrying ghosts. The city is quiet. It is still.

My adopted father is coming over for dinner tonight, and it is our first Thanksgiving without his partner, my other adopted father, D. It is my second Thanksgiving without my mom. It is the 20th Thanksgiving without my birth father. It is the third Thanksgiving without my ex's family. And so on and so on.

I am not sad about this, though. Thanksgiving has never left me feeling very sentimental.

But my city does.

This city has been my home for seven and a half years now. And though I've lost family, friends, jobs, as I've evolved and changed, my city is here. And it is vibrant and the same. My feet hit a certain rhythm on these sidewalks that they carry nowhere else. Fallen leaves are rained on and then crushed underfoot and leaf-shaped stains look like intentional stencils. But they are not so conjured. They are real. My city is real. And so am I, in it.

Last night my mother-in-law was talking about a fancy wedding. She said she had heard that the couple wasn't really in love, and it was about the show of the thing. "How could you marry someone you aren't in love with?" asked my brother-in-law. Everyone else nodded in agreement.

"I did," I said.

That's awkward. But it's part of my history and, subsequently, part of who I am. Part of the person they have come to love. So I said, "I did. I did that." And it got awkward. But I told them I had really married his family, it was his family I had loved. They sort of seemed to understand that, at least intellectually.

I can so clearly see the dining table, usually so casual, fancy for Thanksgiving. I can see the tiny kitchen buzzing with activity, all of us buzzing with alcohol, Gordon Lightfoot or Tom Petty or James Taylor the soundtrack to it all. Dogs whining for food. Three people sharing one chair, giggling.

Maybe I do get sentimental. But unlike missing my mother, which is crippling, today I find myself wanting to bundle up against the chill off Lake Michigan and take my dog for a walk around my absurdly quiet and absurdly beautiful city.

Shift

My mom would have been really proud of me this weekend.

This may be the first time I have thought that and been happy, instead of having it make me sad.

Electing

There is a really wonderful collection of suffrage-era advertisements right now over at Collectors Weekly. Comprised mainly of post cards, the collection is truly astounding.

I never knew a time when I could not vote. Obviously. I'm not over 92 years old. At the age of 26, I haven't been able to vote too terribly long. This year marked only my third presidential election. I am so happy that I was old enough to vote in 2008. Living in Chicago the day Barack Obama was elected president was momentous. It was a palpable joy. It felt like it mattered. Something was changing. Something was going on.

I just made the cut-off to vote for Kerry in 2004. I wasn't a huge fan of Kerry. And I was just starting to understand politics at the time. All I knew was that Bush seemed unintelligent. He seemed to want a theocracy. He seemed war-hungry. He didn't support gay rights. While Kerry didn't show overt support to my LGBT friends, no one was at the time. But a lack of outright slander of my friends would have to do for progressive politics.

In 2008, Barack Obama stood in Grant Park, on the lakeshore of my home city, and addressed his supporters. And that's when he said it: "gay and straight Americans."

...

Wow.

I cried. And though he was slow to act on policy, Obama did repeal DADT. He rescinded the Mexico City Policy just two days after taking office. He eventually came out publicly in support of gay marriage. He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He supports Planned Parenthood. When Hilary lost the nomination, he thanked her for making way for his daughters to achieve.

And while some of his talking points may just seem like so much lip service to frustrated activists, I think that lip service is important, too. While generally defined as being mere empty words, when the words are those that others are too afraid to speak, speaking them in activism. When the president of your country makes a video for the It Gets Better Project, before he even enacts any policies to back up his rhetoric, he has made an impact. When the president addresses "non-believers" in his inaugural address, those of us who do not believe choke, recalling President George Bush Sr. denying our citizenry.

My mother voted Republican her whole life, except twice. For Kennedy, and then for Obama. She had gay friends. She had gay family. She had a daughter who depended on Planned Parenthood for healthcare during a difficult time. It's difficult for people to change. I admired her ability to do so.

My mom won't be voting in this election. This thought falls under the strange "Grief Brain" that forms after a significant loss. Seemingly innocuous things seem laden with meaning. "This is the first election for president in which my mom will not vote," isn't like the anniversary of her death, her birthday, or Mother's Day. But this week I'm remembering a woman who unknowingly led me to feminism by being herself.