"There's no place like home."
Reflections on a first Thanksgiving at home, three years after an epic jiu-jitsu road trip
Three years ago, I was celebrating Thanksgiving alone in San Diego.
My now-husband had flown back East to see his family.
I had stuck around with our dog—at the time, our only dog.
Without a plan, I took a drive up the California coast, Highway 5 to the 101, about 30 minutes north of downtown San Diego.
I got breakfast at a favorite spot by the beach, and I spent the morning watching families and pets run down the main stretch of South Coast Highway in a local Turkey Trot.
I was just over halfway through my year-long jiu-jitsu roadtrip at the time, and while I’d felt homesick on the trip before, this was the moment I most knew I’d need to settle down back east.
It was something of a revelation.
After a lifetime on the East Coast, I’d lived thinking that California would be the dream place to live because…well…it’s California. San Diego, in particular, earns its reputation as a paradise: all the good of Southern California with less of the Hollywood stardust and delusion.
While I’d been engaging in my own self-delusion on the road—mostly of becoming a jiu-jitsu world champion in the Adult age division—the bigger self-delusion was that I could be a “Cali Girl.”
It was Thanksgiving day that it occurred to me: as much as I liked indulging the fantasy of becoming a “cool aunt” kind of character, living out some glamorous, exotic life out on the West Coast, I was not that character.
After long enough, I realized I didn’t want to be a character anyway. I wanted to be myself.
It had taken my moving away, celebrating a major holiday alone, eating a beachside breakfast and watching Turkey Trotters in perfect weather to really understand and appreciate that there was a certain the kind of warmth and fullness that living California couldn’t give me.
I was living in paradise and feeling empty, feeling hungry for something.
I now know what the something was.
It was family.
It was home.
It’s been three years since that Thanksgiving in San Diego, and this year was my first Thanksgiving back at the place I grew up in New Jersey.
Family holidays are rarely perfect, but they can be good.
This year, I’m grateful for the family, for the experiences and decisions of the last three years that led to settling down back east, and for New Jersey still being hospitable to me as someone who no longer lives in the great Garden State.
It’s cold up here in the Northeast, but the feeling of home couldn’t be warmer.
Until next time,
EZ
