Thanksgiving

It is my season of Thanksgiving.

I love my house- except for the insane flies- in December, still??  I love sitting here at the window and watching the light snow float by. On the horizontal. The trees aren't swaying but the clouds are drifting by- pale lavendar on the bottom and gray white and behind them, the glimpes of blue promise sun.  Always the sunshine is a promise, a presence. And I am grateful. Grateful for sun, washed white today by the snow in the air, ever so weak but always there.


  Grateful for the vista of whites and golds, dried grasses along the pasture bottom; shorn fields white as a frozen lake beyond. 


 Pine trees always green, always stalwart in their guard over my house. My land.

And I am thankful for my amazing sister who came with gusto, energy, strength and, as always, laughter.  We went to a service Wednesday night before Thanksgiving Day and Janet exclaimed,
"I DROVE to my sister's house.  I mean - I drove!" The last time she drove to my house was our last Thanksgiving together.  In 1990.  This is the closest we have lived to each other since 1977.  We are loving it! We are thankful.

We do drive our mother crazy with our silliness but when she's with me it's like having the funniest version of myself to play with.  We finish each other sentences. To my mixed up words, she would say, "Oh, I knew exactly what you meant."  Sometimes before I did.  We make the same goofy noises. We eat the same weird food.  We hang pictures with nonchalance- slapping them up and high fiving each other. Lots of pictures. Easy.



We are eight years apart.   When we moved from Alaska to our house in Colorado, she slept upstairs; I slept down in the basement. In my own "you stay out" room.  She was six; I was fourteen.   I was the center of my universe; I didn't know she was a person, she was a little kid.   She was fourteen when I married.  And I moved away, far away. Sure she came to visit; I returned home for holidays.  But there was such a span between us.

And now it's gone. She gave me a bracelet - two tiny silver peas nestled in a silver pod.  That's us. Two peas in  a pod.  My neice said she was sorry to miss Thanksgiving here- she wanted to watch us together.  We don't drive her crazy.... she doesn't think we need to be adults.   We can celebrate being us.  Easy.

This isn't really us- it's her cute Westy, Miya, and a friend.

So we nested.  She drilled nails, shoved furniture around, cleaned out drains. We assembled her first Ikea furniture and agreed it's much more fun to do it with each other than with husbands.  We never once yelled or pouted. We howled when we realized it was assembled upside down.  We stripped screw heads and thought our brother enormously clever for using a star bit to fix them.  We hung Chinese screens by eyeball and laughed when we were hanging another set of pictures in my bedroom and I remembered- "Hey, look, I have a laser level."

"Well, of course you have a laser level.  Has anyone  seen this woman's garage?  She has serious power tools!"    We declared  Emily, my sixteen year old neice, the adult supervision when Janet cut with the power tools.  Everything is funny with Janet.


And we cooked.  She brined a turkey but forgot the turkey roaster.  Our brother has two, of course. "Have you seen that man's shed?  He has everything!"  We set up tables and dug up wine glasses.  We made traditional food for the guests and weird food for ourselves. We play in the kitchen as much as we play anywhere else.

And I am thankful for the spirit of this house.  My aunt said, "It is so peaceful. It feels like a retreat."  Janet was giggly over the "coffee bar'- I just moved all the early morning coffee/tea stuff out of the back corner onto a counter.  "This feels like a  swanky B&B."  She loves the word swanky.  She purrs like a big cat when she says it.

She loves my house.  She loves me.  The main floor is all logs and cozy to welcome others.  But then she went into my first floor art/creative/writing/contemplation space and said, "Wow. This is so you. Upstairs is earthy and inviting.  This space is sophisticated and cerebral" (whatever word she used, this is what she meant. I know) She recognizes my seesaw between hostess and hermit. She tells me to relax and take care of myself. She tells me I'm more than enough.





Eight years is not a span at all. The bridge is our hearts.