Thanksgiving Update

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving Day. Our meal was wonderful and unexpectedly quiet as a result of last-minute cancellations by my brother and cousins. The bright side of this was that I was able to enjoy the longest uninterrupted conversation I have ever had with my uncle, a great guy whom I do not see often enough. Having arrived a bit early, I was even able to enjoy a private visit with my aunt and uncle while I constructed a salad. (No, the world has not ended, as I did not actually "cook" anything . . . I merely assembled pieces of a salad). By the time my Mom and I returned home, it was after 5 pm and I was exhausted, having only slept for a few hours before catching my early morning flight to Chicago.

On another note, there is something strange about waking up in one's childhood bedroom. There was a period of time between high school graduation and my father's death in which I did not sleep in this room, because I always stayed with my Dad when back in Illinois. But now, by default, I stay at my mother's house, which is also the only house I ever lived in as a child. The room has now been painted, the Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stephenson posters are gone and there is a new and much more comfortable mattress on the narrow twin bed. But still, I cannot shake the feeling of being watched here by ghosts of my childhood. Being here returns me to the silence of my childhood, where feelings were never discussed, except for jotting them down in my diary.

Thoughts for another day, as I go off to take my grandmother's boyfriend to breakfast . . .