Thanksgiving Pain

I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to volunteer at the LGBT center today.

Upon getting invited to dinner a few weeks ago for Thanksgiving, I get an email notification from the LGBT Center about joining their dinner.  They were being responsible for the main course, but encouraged donations of side dishes, desserts or just helping hands.

I sat back and over thought (as I do with almost everything) the entire invitation.  I began to think, how hurtful it must be to feel blatantly ostracized or uninvited on a day that even your most liberal and fun-loving friends have a house or home to go to.  You are limited as to where you go, when almost every restaurant, cafe and club is closed.  What do you do?

So for me, dinner at the center meant so much more than just having a place to enjoy a meal.  It surpassed that.  It became a home for the uninvited, a refuge for the secluded, a place for the ostracized and protection for the vulnerable.  It had very little to do with the food for me.  So little had to do with the food, that I paid more attention to the conversations around me than I did with what was on my plate.

Every person at the center was asked to stand up, say their name and mention one thing that no one there would know about them just from the way they looked.  The stories astounded me: a Vietnam War Veteran discharged for being a Lesbian, the first Gay man in the state to go through adoption, an up and coming entrepreneur, and the list went on and on and on.  I kept listening and smiling, devouring these stories as my thanksgiving dinner.

I do not live in a utopia and don't think there will be such a thing after my lifetime.  But we can only hope and dream that we can strive to be the closest to it in the here and now.  As celebratory as today was, I felt the pain or as we say in Arabic, "El Ghasa."  The knotted pain you feel in the heart of your stomach.

Even though today was in some ways as bitter as the cold outside, it was also just as sweet as the sweet potato pie.  And I hope that the same people who attended today will experience nothing but sweetness this holiday and everyday.