Thanksgiving

I am most thankful for every day and every moment my family is together. Life pleasures used to be about the big events, the trips overseas, the jetting off to the west coast, road trips, and day trips. Wednesday night, it was about the four of us in bed watching Avalon. Last night it was about having my parents over at which we, as the song goes, "had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning."

Faina has been low energy the past few days being just at the beginning of a round of chemo. We made a side trip, after the takedown from the 48 hour 5-FU drip, to Maple Lawn Farm to pick up a fresh turkey. She was looking good last night and was certainly engaged in the food preparations, at least to the point of challenging the amounts of spice in the soup, salt in everything (never enough), the size of the ratatouille vegetables, the proper preparation and roasting of the turkey, and the setting of the table. She had a little of almost everything being served, stayed at the table through the meal, and contributed to the lively dinner conversation.

One of the story lines of Avalon was a family slowly breaking up. Thanksgiving is central to the narrative and the catalyst for that disintegration. It has been a rough year for almost everyone with whom we celebrated Thanksgiving last year. Despite the hurdles, we made this Thanksgiving a memorable time of drawing closer together.