“Boy-ooo! Sanders has entered the chat,” Simon bellows when I log in at five after midnight. Matt had sent me the link but it turns out they’re all there.
“Now we can toast properly,” Janna says.
“Oh, hey.” I didn’t realize this was a whole meeting. “’Sup, y’all?”
And then I don’t get another word in edgewise for nearly forty minutes. The club is in rare form tonight. The mood is downright ebullient. We’re all away from home with extended family, except Celia, who’s home with her parents. And it turns out that Simon’s extended family is really his foster parents’ family, and that has to be weird. Maybe it’s him we’re gathering for tonight. It’s unclear. And it doesn’t matter.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Patrick says to Celia at one point. “Are you telling me you made fifty fired pieces this semester alone? Fifty?”
“Yeah,” she says, panning the camera around her bedroom to show off her clay works. She has a shelf of wonky mugs, and another of what looks like vases. A few bowls, a couple of abstract sculptures, and a stack of not-quite-flat coasters with cool carved designs. Everything very glossy and colorful.
“Oh my God,” Janna says. “It’s a wonder that we ever see you.”
“That’s so cool,” Simon adds. “How long does it take to make one?”
“Depends,” Celia explains.
“Are they wonky on purpose?” I ask, eyeing the mugs.
Everyone cracks up, including Celia.
“Way to be supportive, Sanders,” Patrick chides me.
“No, they look great, I mean—I like them—” I flounder to cover my gaffe.
Celia grins. “Some of them, yeah,” she says. “I like asymmetrical things. Also, I’m a beginner. It’s harder than it looks.”
“I knit,” Simon informs us, holding up a thing he’s apparently been working on the whole time we’ve been on the call. “Also harder than it looks.”
“What is it?” Janna asks.
“You can’t tell?” Simon laughs. “It’s a hat. Or, it will be, someday.” Currently it’s about the size of a teacup.
Simon has this suite of internet-based board games we can play from a distance. It’s goofy and fun and perfect for blowing off steam at midnight after an awkward Thanksgiving.
At my family dinner earlier we all had to go around and say something we’re thankful for. It makes me self-conscious in the best of times. Today, I dug myself out of my head long enough to say “I’m thankful for my friends,” and at the time it was hella perfunctory. But now, looking at the five squares with their smiling, bantering faces, the truth hits hard. I am grateful. I’m grateful for this.