This is the first Thanksgiving I’ve ever spent away from my family.  I won’t be home for Christmas either and my birthday is next week.  As I planned this trip, I wondered how I would feel as these holidays rolled around given what a monumental part of my life family is. It seems that the answer is this:  I miss my family tremendously, but I miss them just as much everyday; not just because it’s Thanksgiving. 

It doesn’t FEEL like Thanksgiving Day to me.  Maybe that’s because it’s a sweltering 85 degrees in Phnom Penh (and somehow, 85 degrees here feels much more like 95 so it really can be sweltering).  The autumn season which signals fall and all the subsequent holidays doesn’t exist in Cambodia so perhaps that’s the reason I’m not in “holiday mode.”  I haven’t observed Mom cooking and baking for a week, meticulously labeling all the dishes with their identity, cooking time and temperature in preparation for her orgranized-beyond-imagination Thanksgiving Day which always makes me feel like I should color coordinate my sock drawer.  Along the same lines, I haven’t feasted on the smells of Mom’s pumpkin pies baking in the oven or her amazing one-of-a-kind yeast rolls which pull me out of bed by the nose on Thanksgiving morning.  And most importantly, I’m not at home swapping stories, playing games and watching movies with my parents, my brother and his darling fiance.  So in the absence of all these signals telling my senses that it’s Thanksgiving Day, well, it’s just not. 

The upside of not feeling like it’s Thanksgiving is that I’m not pining for my family any more than I do any other day.  And the downside to not recognizing that it’s Thanksgiving is …. well, I don’t think there is a downside.  During this amazing trip, my heart has been swollen to the point of bursting with appreciation every morning as I wake up.  So even though I don’t FEEL like it’s Thanksgiving Day, I still am counting the many many many many people and experiences for which I’m thankful and the multitude of ways in which I’m blessed.  It’s impossible for me not to feel thankful each day, traveling long-term as I have been, fulfilling my dreams, exceeding my own expectations of what I would find and just enjoying the hell out of this (hopefully not) once-in-a-lifetime experience.  So maybe it’s because I feel abundantly blessed and thankful each day that I don’t need for today to be Thanksgiving Day.