Thanksgiving

They said it was going to rain today, but here at my dining-room table I can barely see what's on the computer monitor with this sunbeam glaring over my shoulder. Now and then a cloud passes in front of the sun, but at least at this noontime hour there doesn't appear to be any rain coming. At our house, the leaves have mostly fallen now; I noticed the mulberry tree let loose this week, I guess I have a little more raking to do, around the side. Now and then a maple leaf floats by the window; ours are yellow, but the tree next door is one of those outrageous red ones, leaves of the two trees mix as they descend past the bay window. When a car passes on the street the layer of yellow and orange leaves in the street jumps up and follows it like a multicolored river; when another comes from the other direction the river reverses itself without any sense of contradiction, following a different way.

My wife has been busy in the kitchen since before I got up this morning. She's going to use pineapple juice instead of orange juice in the cranberry-pomegranate sauce, what do you think? I think it will be good. She stood at the counter for hours last night picking the seeds out of the pomegranates. Pies are in the oven, turkey's loaded up, ready to slide in when the pies come out.

Of all the wise things, the brave strangers who traveled to this land in search of freedom and opportunity remembered to set aside a day just for giving thanks, even though things were hard for them four hundred years ago. Thanksgiving is in some ways the holiday that Hallowe'en could have been, a day for remembering, a harvest festival that celebrates the fecundity of the earth, the indefatigable kindness of people, the passing of another year from light into the inevitable darkness of winter, and the just-as-inevitable return of life and sunlight, once the forces of darkness have been defeated in heaven.

I hope all of our readers get to spend this day in homes as warm and good-smelling as mine, with people who love you. Today we'll forget our differences and share the lucky fact that we are blessed to exist on this earth, to breathe the air and feel the vibrancy of life within our bodies, animating us and driving us irresistibly to share our love with others, today we give thanks for all that came before and the infinitely fertile potential of the future.