There Was Grace

So here's the best part. My kids told me that Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday, that they look forward to it every year, that the folks who come to Thanksgiving dinner are a very cool laid-back crew and there I was thinking I was making them endure this day every year with all their old aunties and uncles and grands, although none of the grands were here this year, and this year there were as many people under 25 as there were over it, but indeed it was a laid-back, easy going, laugh fest, with me the only one a strumming nerve, cleaning up, trying to create order in the midst of enforced chaos, and then finally sitting there, watching everyone, letting it be. Dinner got onto the table as always, the food was enjoyed, and later we trooped next door to take dinner for and visit with my 93-year-old aunt and the woman who takes care of her, and then it was back home to more merriment, and even when I disappeared into my bedroom late in the night, completely overstimulated and jangled, I still loved hearing the weaving conversations and bursts and trills of laughter from the living room, the happy sound of it, the young lovers, the folks in their middle years looking on fondly and remembering back when, and the stories, everyone a storyteller, and the laughs, most of all the laughs. I fell asleep with the music of it dancing round my head. It was a good day, and my husband did the clean up, the broad strokes of it, and I awoke this morning and did the rest, the sweeping and the squaring and the ordering, and my daughter and my three nieces and the boyfriend of one had all left the house at 6 a.m. on a serious Black Friday shopping mission, and my husband went to work, and back at the ranch my three cousins and my son and I puttered and made breakfast and watched the Gray's Anatomy episode on our DVR, and I loved my son hanging with his mom and three aunts, his ease and comfort and charm and jumping to his feet to get this and that for them, and it was a calm and peaceful morning after a very hectic but sweetly memorable feast day. And now, I should get dressed as the shoppers just texted they are on their way back home. They merry-go-round is about get cranked up again.