friendsgiving

hosting party; friendship & the abyss; world collisions

We hosted Friendsgiving last week and 15 of my college friends came. They all barely fitted in our dining table, with benches from the garden backyard and chairs borrowed from neighbors upstairs. All our plates were used, as were our cutleries and fancy cups. I baked bread, we broke bread, and everyone gave thanks.

It was a continuation of our school tradition in the past 4 years. Friendsgiving was a time of gratitude notebooks, sharing food with friends, and spending time with people we loved. We all have graduated now; community feels more precarious than ever. People I used to hang out with daily I now see every other week. I’ve been strategizing with different calling schedules to keep up with long distance and time zones. All of it takes efforts. Like this Friendsgiving: we sent out Partiful invites but also texted everyone individually, spent the afternoon cooking and cleaning beforehand, and throughout the night I was darting in and out to make sure we have enough - plates & cups & forks & chairs & drinks & food. But people came and they came with food, they came with presence and they came with warmth. It was 5 degree in Brooklyn and yet my cheeks were blush-red by the end, from all the running around but also from the heat of squeezing 16 people in a table that should only fit 8.

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This holiday seems to mark something different. I got reminded that for most people, the core unit of life revolves around the atomic family. Being home for Thanksgiving is a given, as is traveling with a partner for Christmas. Meanwhile, I’ve lived my life since 14 being dependent not on the singular family unit, but on a network of close-knitted friends. Most holidays I spent with - well, friends, for most holidays I was abroad. Family was an afterthought; few of my international friends were going home. But this year I got reminded that for most people, family is a drive away, an overnight flight. For me it’s months of planning and an ocean across. I just got off the phone with Mom and told her I would only be back in Hanoi Christmas next year. That’s a long wait to be with the ones you love.

Still I take solace in friendship. My friends were the ones who stood in place of old family traditions and invented new ones. My first Lunar New Year abroad, Linh and I microwaved Vietnamese food and stayed up until midnight watching Tao Quan. There were 3 surprise cakes for my birthday last month. Our high school friend group still call every Christmas. And so in all the ways I’m jealous of people going home, I’m lucky to be overflowing with chosen family.

Mateus told me once that living is like facing a deep dark abyss, and it’s terrifying alone, but with each people who care for you it’s like a thread in a tightly-woven net that holds you back from falling. Sometimes I’m in free fall mode only to be held back by a tight hug or a text hello. And so effortful it might be, I want to keep hosting, parties and events and cozy dinners, to make threads, to give thanks.

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Can I tell you a secret? I’m terrified of parties. Regardless of how many I go to, talking to strangers still make my palms sweat. I literally have to deploy a mental trick - I would close my eyes, mentally count to 5 before walking up to someone to say hi, like you would count up to 5 before plunging into cold water.

And yet I love hosting. I guess mostly because I don’t have to talk to strangers when I host? But even in my own parties half of the time I’m spinning around so I don’t have to talk to people just yet. Has everyone got enough food? Where do we put the coats? Is the music too loud? All these questions seem easier to answer than Who do I talk to now?

But I keep hosting parties like I keep plunging into cold water. It always feels uncomfortable, but you get reminded of why you do it. This time the reminder came when we all finally sat down for dinner. I looked around. My friends came, from Upper West, & Bushwick, & West Virginia & New Mexico. For a million things anyone could do in New York on a Saturday night, they chose to be at our apartment sharing food.

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At the beginning of this year my world collided. I was going home to Vietnam and 5 of my close friends visited. My parents got to meet my friends from college, people I’ve been telling them stories for years. My friends got to see where I grew up, and the people who grew me.

One night of that trip my friend pulled out an ukulele and we just started singing, pop hits but also songs we made up. After watching, Mom pulled me aside and whispered, You know, it’s not so bad if you end up marrying a foreigner. She had always wanted me to marry a Vietnamese because she doesn’t really speak English. But seeing our friend group, she understood something that transcends beyond language.

It’s rare, really, to have beautiful people in your life. It’s even rarer to have people taking the time and effort, to be there with you, to form core life experiences, to transform the mundane, like the act of eating, the act of singing, into something that stirs your heart, makes it dance. This Thanksgiving all we really did were sharing food, and yet the communal thread seems to tie into something bigger, another thread to keep the net strong.

This Thanksgiving I have a lot to be grateful for. I hope you do, too.