Eleanor’s dog Gremlin died, and she had to head home early for the holidays. I ran into her on the way to the elevator, and her eyes looked empty, and I felt awful. I didn’t ask her how Gremlin died. I just said sorry. Our date can wait.
It’s tough when a dog dies. They don’t love like humans do. They crawl into your arms and look you in the eyes and love you, and when you come home late, they love you, and when you don’t get that job or lose some weight or pay your rent on time, they still love you. They’re perfect. And if they were flawed at all, they’d be human.
With Eleanor gone early for the holidays and our first date postponed, I felt both a little more lonely and a little more free. I blasted some really bad rock music and walked around in an old pair of boxers and didn’t do my laundry.
Thanksgiving morning, I woke up and headed to the coffee shop across the street. I had three hours before Thanksgiving at my cousins in New Jersey – when my parents would pick me up and stuff me in the backseat of their Volvo like an eighth grader – and I was intent on cherishing these hours on my own, with a big coffee and the paper.
But I didn’t. Because when an older man with grey whiskers and a copy of the paper sat next to me, and a woman walking by asked, “Hey Mitchell, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I couldn’t help but listen to his answer.
Mitchell told a story about an orange-breasted robin that, for a year, perched on the window sill of a barn he lived near growing up. He said the robin was scrawny, but had a neck so long, it tilted its head, giving it the strained, striving look of always reaching upwards. Mitchell sang to it during the summer, and even pet it once during the fall, but in winter, it got scrawnier and scrawnier. Mitchell tried to feed it scraps, but it would hardly peck at them. Until one day, he found the robin lying cold and stiff on the sill, with his neck still long, and his head forever reaching upwards.
There was a sad silence after the story. It became clear that Mitchell had no plans for Thanksgiving. He didn’t know any better way to say it than to talk about the robin. It’s sad when someone could live life so long and still have no where to go on a holiday.
Me: Want to join me for Thanskgiving?
The question just popped out.
Mitchell: You? Where?
Me: New Jersey.
An hour later, a 40-year-old and an 80-year-old were stuffed into the backseat of a Volvo like eight-graders, with my parents in the front trying to make conversation.
But with Mitchell, that’s not hard, because about two hours into Thanksgiving, I realized the reason he may not have had plans this holiday: he does not shut up.
He told my family about growing up in Michigan, becoming a mechanic-turned-accountant, and falling in love with an equestrian. He waxed on about being in a jazz band, winning a soccer game, and eating his first meal (a bagel) when he moved to New York in the ‘60s.
But he never talked about family, and my family didn’t ask. Instead, we nodded our heads, stuffed ourselves with pie, and between his stories, every now and then asked, “And then what happened?”
When we left and dropped him off outside his apartment not too far away from mine, he thanked me for the company. He looked happy and exhausted, like it was the most social stimulation he’d had in months. Perhaps it was.
I took a walk that night toward the Hudson River, and down the curving West Village streets. I didn’t want to be in my apartment, watching TV. It felt good to be out on one of the city’s quietest nights.
What I love about winter is how bare everything is. The leaves are gone from the trees, and all that stands is their structure. You see them for the jagged, bent, scarred figures that they are.
It becomes clear: how they hold themselves up, how they survive the wind. And when you peer up at them, you realize they, too, are like the robin. They’re tall and thin and forever reaching upwards, striving to grow. I want to be like that, too.
thesaintgermain 