I remember my first Thanksgiving away very well. I was 24 at the time and living abroad in France. I was literally an entire ocean away from my family.
Paris was beautiful at the time because the Christmas decorations were already up—the displays in the shop windows were red and silver and gold, and the streets were white with lights strung overhead. It was a wonderful place to be during the holidays.
But I wasn’t with my family, and the best I could do at the time was a phone call. In 1995, the Internet was just getting started and not too many people were using it. I wasn’t, especially not in Paris.
So I called my parents’ house and talked to everyone in turn. Of course we had to cut the call short because it was so expensive in those days to call overseas. It was probably a $30 phone call for like ten minutes, I don’t remember.
This Thanksgiving, I’m living far away from my family again. But things are so much different today than they were in 1995. The Internet and mobile technologies have transformed how I spend my holidays. Today, a phone call is amateur hour.
These days I get to see my family as well as hear them over the holidays I’m away. Skype has seen to that—thankfully. Normally it ends up being a rowdy, confusing half hour of my nephew and nieces running around, putting their faces way close to the camera before running off to more shenanigans, et cetera.
But in the moments the kids aren’t there, I get to have a few quiet words with my parents and sisters in turn. My mom usually cries. So does my sister (the emotional one).
Sometimes I get a little choked up too, although I don’t show it—I don’t want my mom thinking I’m sad on the holidays. I save that for when the call is over. And I’m not really sad, I just miss them. And not like I did when I lived abroad.
