A Traveler’s Thanksgiving

pumpkin pie (me)

Today is Thanksgiving, and if you are a true American you have made the day more stressful for yourself by adding travel to your generational trauma and yams. Some take the coward’s way out and spend the day with friends and chosen family, but what is a holiday without inconvenience and backhanded compliments?

I kid, of course. My sources tell me (in awed, darkened whispers) that many Americans have happy, well-adjusted families and wonderful Thanksgiving gatherings. If that is you, I hope you enjoy the holiday (and donate to an Indigenous non-profit).

I, for one, am currently enjoying one of my favorite versions of Thanksgiving: Traveling with my partner to their childhood home and sculpting out a more three-dimensional notion of their past via their parents. It is a wonderful way to get the origin story of someone you love; seeing his nose on someone else, his mannerisms executed in a different font. Stories of paper routes and deeply loved lost pets surface here, where maybe they wouldn’t have come up in any other context. I come away with a full belly and another blanket of knowledge with which to love him.

As I launch this brand new blog, The Global Hornist, I am also reminded of past Thanksgivings where my craft has taken me away from both friends and family and I approximate some kind of significance to the day with colleagues and restaurant plates. Three years ago I spent Thanksgiving working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, performing experimental theatre, if you can believe it. You wouldn’t expect a clientele seeking mai tais and zip lines to also be into elaborate handshakes and relentless screaming, but a lot can be said for the adventurous spirit; they were game, and so were we. Thanksgiving came and went without much fanfare - I think I dined in the traditional Mexican restaurant on board that evening. We did find out later that the ship had a quiet array of turkey slices and stuffing for the homesick American up in the cafeteria, and one of my colleagues looked crestfallen when he learned he’d missed it. There is something to be said for grasping the familiar when you’re living on a floating hotel for weeks on end.

I’ve also spent the holiday on the road. In 2018 I was the hornist for the last tour of Spamalot. The one that’s just begun to hit the road is a fancy Union tour, but ours was a rough, gritty, non-union sojourn. Our average stay in a town was basically long enough for a show and a shower. so when we had four entire days in Columbus, Ohio for Thanksgiving, it felt like moving in. The production did right by us and provided a great spread for the whole company. We’d only been on the road for two months by that time, but the fly by night nature of a bus and truck tour makes for fast friends. My (somewhat wine-soaked) memories of that night are warm and full of laughter.

I’m sure I have more non-traditional Thanksgiving stories I am forgetting, but it’s dinnertime here at in my partner’s home state, and I have more stories to gather.

Thanks for reading my first post! Much love and comfort to you all this holiday season.

-The Global Hornist