Thanksgiving
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
Yesterday’s clothes were folded on the bedside bureau and placed within arms reach for the morning trip to the supermarket. My body woke itself as it usually does about a quarter after six and with a near-mechanical response, I slipped from bed and reached into blackness for my cleanest pair of dirty jeans.
I remembered that it was Thanksgiving and that I needed to buy a short list of items this morning before the children were up. In the early hours when the house is still dark and the kids are not yet turning in their beds, the slightest door knob turn or light switch flip seems as though it could rattle picture frames from the walls and shatter window glass. By the dim light in the foyer, I collected my keys and my wool-lined denim jacket.
The house was cool and weather-wise, there seemed little to be thankful for outside. Temperatures slipped below freezing in the now. Cold air was pressing to seep through the narrow space around the house cracks and I could feel the wind rattle the screen door coated with breathy fog.
When the door pushed open, a big exhale of freezing air broke through and overwhelmed the little heat put out by the houses central air system. Something in the shrill coolness and the dark on the street made the day feel as new as the time when I was still in my parents care – when they were still married, when my brother was my idol and I had a room next to his, and all of our souls were trapped there together in ignorant bliss on a quiet suburban street in Kansas. Those years are the earliest I know and the most distant.
I left the house with no disillusionment. I knew what I needed to get and the cold made it easier to take a deliberate path. Thin frost covered the windshield and even after the engine started, it took several minutes before the icy cover began to melt away from the warmth blowing on the dashboard.
The engine came up right away and I backed into the street with good faith that no one was out walking or had parked too closely to the driveway. Along the eastern horizon and higher, dawn was about to break.
The lower rim of the sky was changing from black to blue, about to burst into full color as soon as the sun rolled over the arching ledge. Day would come with it and once it did, the colors would be banded, the nearest band would turn peach, the highest blue. And in between them a gradient would form, a mingling of orange and blue.
At the same moment, my wife was 300 miles away loading her car with Thanksgiving dinner. She’d traveled to Nebraska to visit her ailing mother and to bring home the assorted food items that we were supposed to eat at another table in another state before her mother fell ill. The children being too burdensome for anyone recovering from evasive surgery were left in my charge for a day, and during our time together they have been jubilant to the point of wearing themselves out.
On the drive, I noticed the faint light reflecting on rooftops and the grass blades have been frozen at attention as though each was a miniature soldier. The parking lot was lit by a few orange circles by the high lamps above and inside, the asiles are empty as usual. A few shoppers moved briskly through the store collecting last items for their Thanksgiving feast. Most of the them were hurried wives who have risen early and already put turkeys in the oven. One woman grabbed a thick Thursday edition of the newspaper to see the ads for tomorrow’s early morning sales.
I took one off the shelf as soon as I walked in and headed toward a far corner where the milk is kept. Joy to the World played on the intercom and reminded me of the randomness of my placement here in Kansas. Inflatable turkeys were placed atop a soup can display. Christmas-themed plates and napkins and other party favors were stacked on a folding table by the milk. Landon, an older man with a bald head and a few loose hairs combed over it – who looked very little like a Landon – put my items in a paper sack and wished me a happy Thanksgiving.
I found the day was still frozen on the verge of dawn. The streets were still dark and my children, most of what I have to be thankful for, were still asleep in their beds. I cleared off the countertop to make their breakfast. Compared to the meal that will come later, the half-filled cereal bowls suffered in my mind from simplicity and over-immediacy.
But some days it is a chore to find something for which to be thankful. Those days, thankfulness is more a personal choice or frame of mind than anything. Either you feel thankful about something or you don’t. At our house, it seems to be a concept that lasts the year. We are fortunate to be blessed with these children, the memories that come unexpectedly on the last cold autumnal winds and for our own motivation to rise in the earliest hours to see to a happy holiday.
