Thanksgiving, somewhere else

There is nothing in this one for me to sell you. I want to say that at the top so you can read it without waiting for the turn.

I have had Thanksgiving somewhere else. I have had Christmas somewhere else as well. The food was better than people think. The company was good, because the company is always good, and that is most of what gets you through.

And it did not matter even slightly, because the only place you want to be is home.

You can be fed, warm, safe and among friends, and still be counting.

It is still happening

People are deployed right now. Not in the abstract, not historically. This year, this November, there are people who will not be at a table, doing the job I used to do.

And closer to home, the same is true of every department in this county. Somebody works Thanksgiving. Somebody works Christmas morning. It is not a sacrifice anybody makes a speech about, because it is just the roster, and you took the job knowing the roster existed.

That does not make it nothing.

What I actually do about it

Very little, honestly. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

I answer the phone on the holidays, which sounds like a line and is mostly just habit at this point. I know that the people I work with do not have normal weeks, so I do not have normal hours. That is the whole of it.

If you are reading this from a long way away, or from a shift, I hope next year is the one where you are at the table.

And if you are at the table this year, that is the point of the whole thing. Somebody covered so you could be.