what a difference ...

... a year makes.

this time last year, i was finishing up a meal i'd cooked for twenty-two people. the feast was merely a punctuation point to a dizzying fall that included katie's shower for sixty in september and the birth of baby jake in october. and let's not forget, of course, moving my grandmother up here the previous august, out of the house she'd lived in nearly all 95 years of her life.

we were five generations at my table last year. i'm glad i wallowed in the thanksgivingness of it all. i'm glad i made four kinds of dessert, four different veggies. i'm glad i made extra crescent rolls. i'm glad i rushed and chopped and carried and shopped.

because i don't feel the need to do it now.

my mother and brother and stepfather have gone to vienna - yes, the vienna of freud and the waltz. my sister is hosting one of her multi-cultural thanksgivings in boston (representatives of five different nations are breaking bread together at sheila's house as i type this.) my brother and his family and my stepsister in california are with my daddy and stepmom. my stepchildren are either working or home with their mother. my grandmother has gone to heaven, of course, and my children have dispersed themselves to each other's houses and foreign turkeys and funny-tasting sides.

Beloved went to the soup kitchen this morning, and helped cooked dinner for over 100 people this year. so far this thanksgiving, i've taken a thirty-minute walk with the puppies and had three naps. the weather has changed from bright sun to a sullen twilight. it's only me and Beloved for dinner, and the cold air smells like snow. i defrosted some chicken breasts - organic ones, no less. there's bread from brooklyn, a pumpkin pie i made yesterday, and rose's rhubarb-cranberry mead. it is a very different sort of dinner from last year, and yet for which i feel as deeply grateful.

may whatever sort of thanksgiving you have, Gentle Reader, make you feel similarly blessed.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.