It was four years ago, during this blog’s first Thanksgiving, that I wrote what is still my favorite Thanksgiving post, one that reads like one of my “Twenty Years Ago Today” posts (indeed, probably served as the prototype for that endless series of mine).

So rather than write a whole lot, I’m just going to quote a chunk of it, a look back at my first Thanksgiving in the Twin Cities.

I still had no job, I was broke and malnourished and cold. I’d had a few interviews, but no bites. I had dinner at a friend’s place. And on the way home, I drove downtown, and walked out onto the Central Avenue bridge, and looked out over the city in the dark. If you’ve never seen it, looking at downtown Minneapolis in the dark, when everything’s all lit up, is stunning; for someone just in off the prairie, it was like looking at Manhatten. I was cold, and scared out of my shorts about my short-term prospects – and for the first time, I felt strangely at home in this new city.

And every since then, Thanksgiving has seemed like the turning of the new year for me – the time when I reflect on the past year’s agonies and flubs and successes, and look forward to the next year. Much more so – for me anyway – than New Years’ Eve, which is more decompression from Christmas than anything.

I remember each Thanksgiving in the last 17 years – the giddiness of feeling like I was on the edge of something big in 1986, confident in my ability to pull it all together in ’87, shell-shocked and depressed and contemplating the implosion of my radio career in ’88, crazy in love in ’89, a harried but happy but broke newlywed in ’90, a new dad digging out of deep snowdrifts in ’91, broke and on the brink of eviction with two kids and another on the way in ’92, in a new house in ’93…wondering how long my marriage would last in ’98, being able to answer the question “not long at all” in ’99…

…and today. I sat for a while by the Cathedral of St. Paul, looking down Summit over downtown Saint Paul. The giddy, heady uncertainty of the thanksgivings of my first years as an adult, the throat-clutching terror of my divorce-era holidays, and the weary relief of my first thanksgivings as a divorced dad…well, little bits of all of them are still there. But there’s the emerging sense that my life really is mine, and that I’d better get on with it.

But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.

The following year, of course, was 2003 – one of the most harrowing years of my life. So I’m thankful things got better – much better.

I’m thankful today for:

• A new job, starting in a week and a half, which may be the one I’ve been hoping to find all these years.
• The little editing job I picked up last week, which will mean a nice extra chunk of change coming in in January.
• The show. I’ve perhaps gotten a bit spoiled; after years of pining for that little piece of myself I lost when I got blasted out of talk radio nearly 20 years ago, I simply revel in having it back, if only for a day a week.
• All the people in my life. You know who you are.
• Above all, my family – Bun and Zam, with all their maddening teenagerisms and budding eccentricities.

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 at 8:49 am and is filed under mitch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.