Thanksgiving: Behind a Dumpster, Under the Stars

Thanksgiving is peeking its savory-smelling head
right around the corner, and I'm really excited. I haven't seen my family in a
long time, and I'm really looking forward to just getting propped up on the
couch with them and catching up. Some people have stressful Thanksgiving dinners
-- I've never had one, and I can honestly say that having the sort of family
that I do is the one thing in my life that I am the most thankful for.


Not that I am taking that for granted, but that spans across
the thirty years that I've been on Earth. One year, I had a Thanksgiving that
was so simultaneously unpleasant and incredible that it sledgehammered the
concept of gratitude into my starving brain.


If you're
thinking that I'm about to tell you about it, you're right. And if you're
thinking that I'm trying to inspire you to share your own similar stories: blue
ribbon for you.

I ran this piece on AOL's
People Connection a year ago, and on a under-read and forgotten blog as well. I
doubt many of you read it, so I'm re-running it here as an
example.

_____________________________

My Thanksgiving dinner 2003 was a sub-fresh piece of
swordfish, roasted squash and lukewarm pasta, served next to an overripe
restaurant dumpster and eaten with my bare filthy hands so fast that I literally
bit my own fingers.

I had to get back to work washing dishes
and mopping toilets before my less-than-sympathetic boss caught me missing.
Ordinarily I wouldn't have been so passionate about cleaning up after the
wealthy, but I'd been penniless and homeless for a month. As an illegal alien in
Australia, washing dishes at a beachside cafe was the top of the career ladder.


Most people think that homelessness means sleeping on the
street in broad daylight, spare-changing from strangers. That's a vicious
stereotype kept alive by the very few with the aforementioned habits. Most of
the homeless either work too hard or want to very badly. They sleep in shelters,
cars, or in my case, at the home of a girlfriend's friend.


We were dead broke after a very poor financial decision and
a few unlucky breaks.That's how it happens for most people,excluding natural
disaster. I was almost totally unemployable for visa reasons, and she was
job-hunting with all her might. My girlfriend's friend had a 2 year old son, an
estranged husband, a symbiotic marijuana and anger-management problem, and a
spare bedroom. It was either the spare room, a shelter or a secluded place
between some sand dunes. We didn't think twice.

The kitchen
was open to us any time of day or night. I'm a large guy with an appetite to
match, and that couldn't have been cheap for a single mom with a single income.
It always smelled like pot and air freshener, before breakfast, after dinner and
right before the kid's bedtime.

The TV was on nonstop from
7AM to 10PM. The kid smiled and hopped up and down when 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg
came on, which was cute at first. The way he shrieked and ran at the TV to hug
it whenever I turned it off was more than a little upsetting.


More disturbing than the TV hugging was the kid's habit of
calling me 'daddy.' For better or for worse, I was the only male figure he dealt
with most days, and it made sense to him.

We ate dinner
together every night, family-style (with the television on) and talked about our
days, unless 'Australian Idol' was on. My days rarely varied.


After waking up realizing my family and friends were on the
other side of the planet, I'd catch the train to the city and wander in and out
of allthe hostels, cafes and construction sites I could find, looking for cash
work. When I needed a break, I'd duck into a public library and pitch stories to
all the publications I could imagine. I saved dollars I didn't have by waiting
to eat until I was dizzy from hunger, then shoplifting pies and pasties from
bakeries by the train station.

Once you're weak from hunger, the smallest bit of food
brings you right back. After a week of this, I was able to shrink my appetite,
saving precious dollars at lunch and priceless pride at breakfast and dinner by
eating less from our host's pantry.

Our host's temper
detonated without warning over incredibly trivial stuff. Any normal person's
would if they were raising a child in his terrible twos and supporting two able
adults. It is also a fact that I once spent 45 minutes apologizing for not
arranging items in the refrigerator largest in the back to smallest in the front
so that you could see everything in there.

Lightning struck
one week. I got a long-awaited check from an American magazine and we could put
a deposit down on a place of our own. Then I got my job as a dishwasher at the
cafe. It paid AU $200 a week, cash, for a nine-hour shift of mopping, scrubbing,
prepping and lugging.

Although it wasn't in the job description, I also taught pidgin
English to the other dishwasher, a Czech chemical scientist who was nevertheless
functionally illiterate in my language. I drew cartoons for him in the grease on
our counter, illustrating the tricky differences between the words 'mop' and
'map.' We bonded over stolen beers pounded by the dumpster. Not only did I have
a job, I had a new friend.

That Thanksgiving dinner by the
dumpster gave me serious intestinal distress but I loved every bite. I'd earned
it myself, and nothing tastes better than that. One night soon afterwards, while
I was at work, our host accused me and my girlfriend of taking a kitchen knife
and worrying the phone cord so that it would sever sometime in the near future.
This accusation was carried out at maximum volume and carried a number of
accurate character assassinations along with it. I clocked out one night and
crashed somewhere else, moving into our place a few days later.


As crazy and furious as she was, I might owe my life to that
woman. She had every reason in the world to turn us down, and took us in anyway.
If it hadn't been for her, I couldn't have gotten a job or an apartment. I
wouldn't have had a house to write from or a room to sleep in, and my poverty
and desperation could have only spiraled further downward.

On
this Thanksgiving and every one for the rest of my life, I will remember that
wonderful, kindhearted psychopath who screamed and ranted as she fed and housed
me. She sacrificed her questionable sanity so a total stranger could live like
an adult again, and for that I am eternally
grateful.  
______________

Have
you ever been incredibly, overwhelmingly grateful in a totally unexpected way,
Thanksgiving or not? What was the most unusual Thanksgiving you've ever had?

In
the interest of full disclosure, I am doing the editors' picks this weekend, and
it's going to be holiday themed. If any of you have a post like this under your
blogs' belts, please send it to me (or leave a link in my comments) for
consideration in the weekend picks.