recharging the batteries
23 November 1999

Fall 1993.

When I think of Thanksgiving I always think of that time in my life. Drinking with Sphinx on Thursday nights. Making the Dean's List. Holing up in my tiny Stadium single. Sitting at my grandmother's hospital bedside on a first-snow afternoon. Reading Generation X for the first time under the fluorescent hospital hallway lights. Receiving all those letters from Brian.

He sat in a large Arlington, Virginia house miles away from home and wrote out my future feelings. He connected to me, as you would connect to a ghost of your previous self. He scrawled his wisdom and encouragement onto his last pages of Ohio State stationary, which appeared in my 1318 mailbox two days later, encased in priority mail envelopes.

One thing he talked about was coming home for the holidays. He said it was one thing to drive an hour or two to see family that you just saw a few weeks before. But it was quite another to book a flight, step onto a plane and put your life on hold for an extended weekend. To fall into the well of familiarity and unconditionality that you didn't even know you craved. And ultimately, to recharge your batteries.

I couldn't fully understand what he meant until I moved to Boston. But with each passing year that I spend alone in my tiny studio apartment, I look forward to Thanksgiving more and more. It's the ultimate escape: a plane ride, a secret hide-away and a feeling of safety and comfort. It softens the edges that build up through endless amounts of independence, like checking off antialias to blur the sharpness of text.

So I'm going home, amid the connections and confusion and chaos of holiday travel. But as soon as I step onto the jetway, I'm leaving this hard shell behind to let the gentle warmth soak into my skin, recharging my soul.

What recharges your batteries?