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Thanks and sorrows
Dec. 1st, 2013 10:08 pmIt has been a hard week, and a quiet week, and a week full of people to hold onto and wood fires from the logs my dad split by hand this summer.
I'm thankful that I'm sitting at home on a Sunday night with time to write to you all. And I'm thankful that I'm feeling well enough to have just eaten a cookie (nothing like a persistent cold to make you realize what you take for granted.) And I'm overwhelmingly thankful to have spent this weekend with family and family friends, two of my oldest friends and their partners and a remarkably eloquent two-year-old who knows about volcanoes ... and for goats to rub on the forehead and horses to eat my parka and fancy chickens to parade around the pot-bellied pig.
I'm thankful to have talked with my sister on the phone on Thursday, and to know that she and her partner were hiking near Carmel with a friend of his, and warm and well-fed and comforted on the holiday.
I'm thankful to have seen my brother last weekend unexpectedly and listened to him playing Greensleeves and Fur Elise on the piano. I'm more thankful than I can tell you to have made it to the farm last weekend, to see Tante, my grandmother by bonds if not by blood, one last time.
I'm thankful beyond words for the kindness of people at work who took over for me on Tuesday, when my parents called to tell me that she was gone.
My editors sent me home early, and told me not even to come in the next day. So I reached the farm early, to comfort my parents and make pumpkin pies with my mother, out of pumpkin puree she had frozen. And on Tuesday night I wrote a column for Tante. As hard as this is, I am thankful too, inexpressibly thankful, that I've had her to love for 35 years.
( How do you describe laughter? )
I'm thankful that I'm sitting at home on a Sunday night with time to write to you all. And I'm thankful that I'm feeling well enough to have just eaten a cookie (nothing like a persistent cold to make you realize what you take for granted.) And I'm overwhelmingly thankful to have spent this weekend with family and family friends, two of my oldest friends and their partners and a remarkably eloquent two-year-old who knows about volcanoes ... and for goats to rub on the forehead and horses to eat my parka and fancy chickens to parade around the pot-bellied pig.
I'm thankful to have talked with my sister on the phone on Thursday, and to know that she and her partner were hiking near Carmel with a friend of his, and warm and well-fed and comforted on the holiday.
I'm thankful to have seen my brother last weekend unexpectedly and listened to him playing Greensleeves and Fur Elise on the piano. I'm more thankful than I can tell you to have made it to the farm last weekend, to see Tante, my grandmother by bonds if not by blood, one last time.
I'm thankful beyond words for the kindness of people at work who took over for me on Tuesday, when my parents called to tell me that she was gone.
My editors sent me home early, and told me not even to come in the next day. So I reached the farm early, to comfort my parents and make pumpkin pies with my mother, out of pumpkin puree she had frozen. And on Tuesday night I wrote a column for Tante. As hard as this is, I am thankful too, inexpressibly thankful, that I've had her to love for 35 years.
( How do you describe laughter? )
