The ghost of Thanksgiving past
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorites. Nobody ever believed me when I said it, because I seldom went home for the day and spent nearly all of my Turkey Days all by myself. It’s supposed to be a family holiday, after all.
But what’s not to love? You close your eyes and think to yourself actually, come to think of it, I have a pretty sweet deal — that mental exercise is good for the soul, or the id, or whatever meat gizmo drives the self, I do firmly believe — and then you gorge yourself into a coma. I have never missed observing Thanksgiving with all my heart. w00t!
It is also overlaid with a personal meaning — I arrived in Britain permanently on a Thanksgiving Day. I count the holiday as my Brittaversary, rather than the date. Four years, if you can believe it. Stranger in a strange land.
And now, yet another layer of meaning, as we attended the funeral of a neighbor this afternoon, a great and mighty sheep farmer in our little community. It was a sunny and very windy day, and we stood outside with a crowd (our local church is small and he was a popular man) getting blown around like flags. They carried in his coffin draped in a whole woolly fleece.
And then Uncle B had to go up to London and won’t be back until late. So here I am, like a Thanksgiving of yore, full up on my solitary feast and dozing in front of my Tudor fire while the wind howls away outside. A strange day, but on the whole, you know, I have a pretty sweet deal.
November 22, 2012 — 11:00 pm
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